Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon returns to San Francisco Ballet as a full-length drama of desire, poverty, luxury and devastating loss. Adapted from Abbé Prévost’s novel, the three-act ballet follows Manon and Des Grieux through a consuming love affair tested by ambition and the glittering world she longs to enter.

MacMillan’s psychologically acute choreography finds its emotional center in the central couple’s impassioned pas de deux. Jules Massenet’s music, orchestrated and arranged by Martin Yates, and Nicholas Georgiadis’ scenery and costumes heighten the contrast between Manon’s impoverished origins and the lavish society surrounding her. The production contains mature themes.