In 2011, at the age of 46, when she had barely danced a classical work for four years, Sylvie Guillem returned to the role of Manon in Kenneth MacMillan’s three-act ballet. She said she wanted to make sure there was nothing new she could find in this, his 1974 dance interpretation of Abbé Prévost’s story of a convent girl who becomes a courtesan and dies when her love for a penniless student overwhelms her determination to make her way in a venal world.
The richness of the ballet, together with its trajectory from rags to riches and back again, is one reason it’s performed around the world. For its 50th anniversary, its home company, the Royal Ballet, is putting a strong array of casts through its emotional wringer.
