Review: MANON at San Francisco Ballet

The chance to see a classic full-length ballet for the first time is always a rare and welcome opportunity, so it’s especially exciting that San Francisco Ballet is kicking off its 2025 Repertory Season with Kenneth McMillan’s Manon, choreographed in 1974 and subsequently performed all over the world, but never before in San Francisco. Given that McMillan is one of the seminal choreographers of the 20th century and Manon is considered one of his signature works, this curious omission has now thankfully been rectified.

That said, over 50 years on, the story of Manon (familiar from two different, similarly-titled operas), does seem a curious choice for 2025. It’s a tale of an impoverished Parisian convent girl who falls in love with a passionate young student (Des Grieux) before her amoral brother (Lescaut) nudges her to make some bad life choices that basically lead her into prostitution and she is transported to America where she is sexually assaulted and meets a bad end in the swamps of Louisiana. It’s definitely the stuff of overheated grand opera and I can’t say I’m sure what, if any, relevance it has to our contemporary world.

But – and this is a very big but – McMillan’s choreography is always eminently watchable and often flat-out brilliant. He’s probably best known for his psychological acuity, the way his movement burrows under the skin of the characters so they register as flesh and blood human beings. Midway through Manon, it occurred to me that the performers move and act exactly as you and I might if we found ourselves in similar situations – and we happened to be fabulous dancers. It’s as though McMillan had a preternatural understanding of how human beings connect.

What really makes this ballet is a series of ravishing pas de deux for Manon and Des Grieux, each one different. For example, Act I features a post-coital dance that is whooshily romantic and fairly drenched in sex, truly erotic without going to the icky place. In the middle of it, he literally sweeps her off her feet and they engage in a deeply passionate and prolonged kiss. It’s a perfect distillation of that blush of first love/lust when you just can’t keep your hands off your partner. Afterwards, Manon literally flies back onto the bed in a state of delirium, rapturous with afterglow.

In Act II, there is another gorgeous bedroom pas de deux, this one achingly tender with undercurrents of turbulence and sadness as it becomes clear that Manon is a little too enamored with her new life of luxury. When we see the pair again in Act III she has lost all of her spark and they engage in a walking motif that is a mournful echo of a moment of ecstasy from Act I. It’s that kind of depth and variation that keeps the ballet compelling and makes it worthy of repeat viewings.

I was a bit of two minds about the design work, which is a virtual recreation of the 1974 original. Nicholas Georgiadis’ scenery makes liberal use of the earth tones that were all the rage in the 1970s (trust me, I’m a child of the 70s and know whereof I speak), which makes many sequences look sludgy and indistinct (so many shades of brown!). On the other hand, the limited palette works beautifully for Des Grieux’s bedroom, where a vertiginous, pale grey and off-white canopied bed looks like an expressionist-romantic cavern of stalactites, a wonderfully dreamy setting for the carnal shenanigans. The costumes, also by Georgiadis, have their high and low points as well. Many read too beigy-brown from the audience, but there are stunners like Manon’s second-act, mid-length confection that is chic, filmy and just a little edgy – perfect for her mercurial character.

The score by Jules Massenet is gorgeous, though not adapted from his eponymous opera. In creating the ballet, McMillan chose instead to set it to various pieces of Massenet’s other compositions that have been rearranged to meet the dramatic purposes of the story. This results in an aural landscape that is lushly beautiful (all those swoony strings!), if not necessarily one with a strong narrative thrust since themes are not developed from beginning to end as they would be in a purpose-written ballet score. Still the SFB orchestra sounded glorious under conductor Martin West’s sensitive direction, ever attentive to the dancers’ needs.

And, of course, this is San Francisco Ballet so the dancing was exceptional pretty much across the board. The dozens of corps de ballet dancers and demi-soloists seemed to be having a blast performing a ballet that allows more leeway for individual expression than, say, playing a swan in Swan Lake or a snowflake in Nutcracker. Soloist Victor Prigent, new to the company, made a strong impression as the Lead Beggar, delightfully impish and entirely winning. And how great it was to see former prima ballerina Joanna Berman in the character role of Madame. Berman’s malleable face and quirky stage presence make her intrinsically interesting to watch. (How I’d love to see what she could do with the Fairy of Darkness in Sleeping Beauty, not to mention her take on Drosselmeyer in Nutcracker.)

Cavan Conley as Lescaut, Manon’s dodgy brother, utilizes his spectacular aerial skills to their fullest in his portrayal of a brash young man who gets himself in too deep. His Act II drunken solo is a wonder of technique, bravura pyrotechnics that paradoxically feel constantly on the verge of spinning out of control. Frances Chung as his lusty paramour, alas, is a little miscast. Arguably SFB’s most impressive classicist, Chung’s innate style of movement is too pristine for a character supposedly so loose of virtue. Interestingly, Chung finally came fully alive in her Act II drunken sequence with Conley. Lowdown and dirty might not be in her wheelhouse, but funny she can do.

Max Cauthorn, who recently rejoined the company after a short time away, made a terrific Des Grieux. The role is a perfect match for his talents and temperament – elegant and courtly with a lot going on under the surface - and Cauthorn danced it beautifully. Opening night marked a major milestone in the career of young Jasmine Jimison, promoted to principal dancer less than a year ago, in the title role of Manon. This is really Manon’s ballet and it’s one hugely challenging role. She progresses from naïve convent girl to madly-in-love young woman to social striver to fallen woman to virtual corpse sapped of any life force, and Jimison delineated every step on that emotional journey. I was especially taken with the expressiveness of Jimison’s arms. The way they moved, the attitude they conveyed, made legible every changing emotion.

As wonderful as the opening night leads were, SFB is fielding four different casts to tackle those roles, fantastic dancers all, so subsequent performances are bound to reveal additional glories of Manon. With a company of this caliber, you’re guaranteed to get a memorable performance no matter who you see dance.

Finally, I feel compelled to comment on an aspect of the evening that was not part of the performance itself. The Opera House’s grand foyer was decorated to suggest a 19th-century Parisian bordello, festooned with swaths of sheer fabric, a few circular velvet settees and a raised light box projecting provocatively posturing figures in silhouette. Hired hands dressed in period garb roamed the crowd, inviting audience members to stuff cash into their garters as they posed for photos. Presumably this was an attempt to make the performance an immersive experience, but what it ultimately did was make a mockery of the tragic story unfolding onstage. It’s hard to empathize with Manon’s descent into hell when you’ve just taken a selfie with a laughing, similarly-clad actor out in the lobby.

Believe me, I understand the need for performing arts organizations to experiment with different ways to attract and engage new audiences, but this wasn’t the solution. Dumbing the art down to make it more “accessible” to contemporary audiences is never the way to go.

(All photos by Lindsay Thomas)

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