The San Francisco Ballet will open its 2025 repertory season with a company premiere of Kenneth MacMillan's 'Manon,' marking one of five ballets by British choreographers to be staged during the season. Artistic director Tamara Rojo highlights the influence of British theatrical traditions on these choreographers and the unique opportunity to present 'Manon' using original sets and costumes from the Royal Ballet.
When San Francisco Ballet presented its “British Icons” program of works by the great English choreographers Sir Frederick Ashton and Sir Kenneth MacMillan during the 2024 repertory season, the company might have been offering a hint of what was to come. Indeed, when the troupe opens its 2025 repertory season Jan. 24, with the company premiere of MacMillan’s “ Manon ,” it will represent one of five ballets by British choreographers to be staged this season.
\“I think what all British choreographers have is that constant contact with theatricality and theatrical traditions, especially in London,” said San Francisco Ballet artistic director Tamara Rojo. A love story set to music by Massenet and based on Abbé Prévost’s 1731 novel “L’Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut,” MacMillan’s “Manon” premiered at London’s Royal Opera House in 1974. San Francisco Ballet’s production will be essentially identical to the one the Royal Ballet first unveiled. “For the first time, we have been able to acquire the original Nicholas Georgiadis-designed sets and even the costumes, so this is a very rare event — it’s like borrowing the ‘Mona Lisa,’ frankly,” Rojo said. “It’s such an extraordinary production that never leaves the Royal Opera House, and I’m grateful to the management and artistic director of the Royal Ballet that they agreed for us to bring this production here.” Rojo added that not only will the production be an amazing opportunity for audiences to see “Manon” as it was originally intended, it’s also a special experience for the dancers, with its rich, detailed costumes. Evocative of 18th-century France, they help explore the tale’s central themes of wealth, desire and moral decline, while revealing unique personal details. “When the dancers of the company wear the costumes, they will see the tags with all the names of the previous ballerinas, generation after generation, who have done the ballet wearing these same costumes,” Rojo said. \“Manon” represents the second MacMillan ballet that the company has presented since Rojo assumed her role as artistic director in late 2022 — his 1965-premiering “Song of the Earth” was included in last year’s “British Icons” program. Rojo, who danced the lead role in “Manon” when she was a ballerina with the Royal Ballet, has long held MacMillan in high regard as a choreographer, starting with his extraordinary musicality. “First and foremost, he had an ability to compose choreography that seems to have been written with the music — the way the choreography goes with the music is incomparable from any other choreographer,” Rojo said. “The second is the depth of character: He was somebody who came from the theatrical British tradition, understood very complex characters, and was able to put that in the ballet world in a way that had never been done before.” Unlike ballets by classical masters — such as the Mariinsky Theatre’s “Marius Petipa,” which told much of the story through mime — Rojo pointed out that, in MacMillan’s ballets, the characters’ steps and moves tell the story, help move it forward and give us insight into who they are. She said the language specific to each character MacMillan developed also created an opportunity for artistic freedom. “When you have steps which are also the words, you have a lot of freedom to interpret it in a personal way,” Rojo explained. “And that means his ballets are always alive and, just like the Shakespearean canon, they are constantly revisited, reinterpreted and looked at from a new angle that wasn’t considered before. And so they continue to progress and develop with new generations of artists.” MacMillan’s “Song of the Earth” was paired with Ashton’s 1963 love story “Marguerite and Armand” in last year’s “British Icons” program. Ashton’s opus, which the troupe will reprise as part of its “Broken Love” program April 8-18, is set to music by Liszt and is another ballet whose lead role Rojo performed as a ballerina with the Royal Ballet. Rojo lauded Ashton for his innovative choreography and stewardship as artistic director of the Royal Ballet, but also cited him as an example of how important it is for new artists to be reverent of the traditions set by choreographers like him
BALLET MACMILLAN MANON SAN FRANCISCO BALLET TAMARA ROJO BRITISH CHOREOGRAPHERS ASHTON ROYAL BALLET
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