Day: 10 September 2024

COOL BRITANNIA

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Three Bold British Voices in Dance

Echoing its namesake’s celebration of innovation and creativity, ‘Cool Britannia’ offers a dynamic exploration of British dance through provocative new voices:

Chroma by Wayne McGregor: This groundbreaking ballet is “a shock to the system” merging cutting-edge choreography with a rhythmic complexity rock-inspired score by Joby Talbot and The White Stripes’ Jack White III, for a vibrant, visceral experience.

Within the Golden Hour by Christopher Wheeldon: A visually atmospheric ballet that blends elegant choreography with a luminous score, offering a captivating journey through light, color, and sensory richness.

Dust by Akram Khan: A one-act ballet offers a dramatic exploration of the human experience amidst the haunting backdrop of post-World War I. This is a North American premiere.

MANON

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MACMILLAN AT HIS BEST IN SAN FRANCISCO BALLET

«L’histoire de Manon», generally referred to as «Manon», is a three-act ballet choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan to music by Jules Massenet and based on the 1731 novel Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost. The ballet was first performed by The Royal Ballet in London in 1974 with Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell in the leading roles.

MacMillan was quoted as saying that he found his clue to Manon’s behaviour in her background of poverty: ‘Manon is not so much afraid of being poor as ashamed of being poor. Poverty in that period was the equivalent of long, slow death’. Nicholas Georgiadis’s designs reflect the precarious division between opulence and degradation in pre-Revolutionary France. (The ballet is set later in the 18th century than Prévost’s novel.) Tiers of rags drape the background in the first two acts, half-hidden behind the architectural sets. Demi-monde characters flaunt their finery while beggars, thieves and prostitutes ply their trades.