S.F. Ballet’s ‘Manon’ tells an eerily familiar story of poverty and depravity

Content warning: This article contains descriptions of sexual assault.

Watching San Francisco Ballet’s “Manon” in Civic Center, a few mere steps away from one of city’s worst homelessness and opioid overdose crises, I was chilled by the uncanny similarity between reality and art.

“Manon,” which premiered at the War Memorial Opera House on Friday, was choreographed in 1974 by former Royal Ballet Artistic Director Kenneth MacMillan based on a 1731 French novel. Centered around a girl’s choice between two men — one rich and one modest — the story development is nothing novel. 

However, taking in the striking visuals of the plight of the poor, portrayed flawlessly by dancers in realistic costumes on loan from London’s Royal Ballet, I can’t help but feel that “Manon” is unlike any other I have seen, even MacMillan’s own 1965 “Romeo and Juliet.”

Manon, a young girl, is wooed by the wealthy Monsieur G.M. on her way to enter a convent, but she falls in love instead with the theology student des Grieux. Despite being temporarily won over by Monsieur G.M.’s lavish gifts, Manon decides to run away with de Grieux after he wins Monsieur G.M.’s money in a card game. Both eventually fall prey to the latter’s wrath: Manon is arrested, and, in the last act, both are sent to France’s penal colony in Louisiana, where she is raped by a jailer and dies in de Grieux’s arms.

The graceful pas de deux between Manon (Jasmine Jimison) and de Grieux (Max Cauthorn) in his bedroom certainly captivated some with their passion and youthful innocence. But most important of all, the company’s portrayal of the couple’s fall into destitution in America arrested me with a pang of sympathy.

A group of women enter the stage, wearing ragged, sooted dresses (costume design by Nicholas Georgiadis). Their group dance to slow, narrative music was lifeless and punctuated by them bending over to cough. 

Enter de Grieux supporting the ill Manon with one arm. Previously lively and sought after, Manon, now in a grey rag just like any other, can barely walk as she also bends, in a fashion not unsimilar to the “fentanyl fold” frequently seen in certain areas of downtown San Francisco. As I walked along Market Street after the show, I couldn’t help but notice the real-life Manon’s: individuals standing at street corners, hunched over, their heads almost resting on their knees, barely conscious after opioid use.

What was more difficult to watch was the pas de deux where the jailer (Nathaniel Remez) forces himself on Manon, which forms a direct contrast with Jimison’s earlier duets with Cauthorn. As Remez violently pulls Jimison from one side to another, we become painfully aware of Manon’s powerlessness. 

Inequality underlies the entire production. This is established right at the start, where the first-ever entry of the wealthy accompanied by their courtesans is disrupted by pleading beggars (one portrayed by none other than Lleyton Ho ’25). The rich are at times ridiculed with their clown-like face paint and exaggerated flirtation with courtesans. Other times they are feared for their ability to do so much as kill others — as Monsieur G.M. does — with impunity.

Ballet is by nature unrealistic. But I found that, here, it enhances the emotional impact of socio-economic inequality. I walked by downtown San Francisco countless times over the summer, but nothing in the past few months at Stanford evoked my reflection of the state of homelessness and overdose in the streets, as much as the “Manon” performance.

Art defamiliarizes reality, and thereby, we emerge from it with a sharper vision of the world we are in. San Francisco Ballet’s masterful performance of “Manon” is a heart-wrenching proof of it.

Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.

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