Cathy Marston is back creating for San Francisco Ballet after the success of her first ballet for the company, Snowblind. Mrs. Robinson premieres next month featuring Sarah Van Patten as the title character, the notorious seductress we have so fascinatedly read about and watched.
Inspired by The Graduate, Marston brings this cult story to the stage (finally, after a two-year pandemic-caused delay) highlighted by an original score by Terry Davies, scenic and costume designs by Patrick Kinmonth, and a scenario developed by the choreographer and Edward Kemp.

Mrs. Robinson Premieres on February 1
Rounding out Program 1 are George Balanchine’s Symphony in C and Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson’s Trio.
Hailed as one of the world’s foremost exponents of the Balanchine repertory, SF Ballet first presented Balanchine’s Symphony in C in 1961, one of thirty ballets by Balanchine in the Company’s repertory and one which has not been performed by SF Ballet since 2011.
Tomasson’s Trio, an abstract dance set to Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, premiered in 2011 in San Francisco before touring to New York, London, and Washington, D.C, and was last seen in San Francisco in 2017.
Program 2 opens on February 3 with Tomasson’s Caprice, Jerome Robbins’ In the Night, and the SF Ballet premiere of William Forsythe’s Blake Works I.
Called “a brilliant expression of purity and modernity” by Vogue, Blake Works I is Forsythe’s 2016 creation for Paris Opera Ballet and sets seven movements of dance to songs from James Blake’s 2016 album The Colour in Anything. Forsythe contributed to the ballet’s stage, costume, and lighting design in collaboration with costume designer Dorothee Merg and lighting designer Tanja Ruehl.
These two programs, like each of the 2022 Season, celebrates the expansive unfolding of Tomasson’s career as a dancer and choreographer, encompassing works by luminaries in the field and repertory from Tomasson’s own canon.
Featured Photo of Sarah Van Patten and Joseph Walsh in Marston’s Mrs. Robinson © San Francisco Ballet