The San Francisco Ballet 2024 season at War Memorial Opera House, curated by Artistic Director Tamara Rojo, focuses on
cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural collaborations, celebrates the artists and histories of San Francisco, and spotlights women’s voices on stage and off.
SF Ballet performs with the Grammy Award-winning San Francisco Ballet Orchestra throughout the season, under the direction of Music Director Martin West.
As part of its work to engage with global perspectives, San Francisco Ballet will invite international guest artists Julio Bocca, Ed Watson, Sandy Jennings, and Patrick Armand to teach and work with the company during intensive residencies throughout the season.
San Francisco Ballet 2024 Season Schedule
The Nutcracker | December 13-30, 2023
War Memorial Opera House
- The Nutcracker by Helgi Tomasson
Tomasson’s version of The Nutcracker, set in San Francisco, builds upon SF Ballet’s legacy as the first American company to present a full-length production in 1944, paving the way for the work to become a holiday classic. The sensory-friendly performance of Nutcracker, which provides a welcoming environment for neurodiverse audiences of all abilities, returns on December 30.
Mere Mortals | January 6 – February 1, 2024
War Memorial Opera House
- Mere Mortals by Aszure Barton
A collective of boundary-pushing artists from around the world and across disciplines, brought together by Rojo, will recontextualize the classic parable of Pandora’s Box for our modern world in Mere Mortals.
This new kind of ballet experience, which marks the first full-length work SF Ballet has commissioned from a female choreographer, will take on the possibilities and consequences brought on by artificial intelligence.
The team is spearheaded by composer Floating Points (aka Sam Shepherd), a U.K.-based composer, producer, and DJ known equally for his headlining appearances on the electronic music festival circuit and his contributions to contemporary classical and jazz; and Aszure Barton, the Canadian-born, internationally celebrated choreographer renowned for her innovative and interdisciplinary approach to dance.
An immersive sensory experience will take over the War Memorial Opera House, combining dance, electronic music, visual design, and technology. Design collaborators include Barcelona-based design firm Hamill Industries, whose work emphasizes the visualization of sound with computerized, robotic, and video techniques; and Michelle Jank, one of Australia’s most talented and versatile couture and costume designers who has been a collaborator of Aszure Barton for over a decade.
At each performance, Floating Points will perform his composition live alongside the SF Ballet Orchestra. Further program details, including pre- and post-show activations, and information on the work’s New York premiere in Spring 2024 are forthcoming.
British Icons | February 9-15, 2024
War Memorial Opera House
- Song of the Earth by Sir Kenneth MacMillan
- Marguerite & Armand by Sir Frederick Ashton
British Icons will bring together on one program two of the most important British ballet choreographers, Sir Kenneth MacMillan and Sir Frederick Ashton, whose work is rarely staged in the U.S. and has never been seen in San Francisco. Each ballet offers a striking reflection on the power of love and loss.
MacMillan’s Song of the Earth weaves a story of love, loss, and bittersweet death through poetic and melancholic choreography, along with two live singers accompanying the Mahler song cycle Das Lied von der Erde. MacMillan, the leading choreographer of his time, incorporates influences from Japanese Noh and Kabuki theater in a beautiful, profound reflection on mortality and loneliness.
Ashton’s deeply passionate and lushly designed Marguerite & Armand, with highly coveted principal roles originally created for ballet superstars Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn – who famously performed with SF Ballet’s company during the “Summer of Love” in 1967 – will make a rare U.S. appearance in SF Ballet’s program as only the second American company to perform this work.
Swan Lake | February 23 – March 3, 2024 & April 30 – May 5, 2024
War Memorial Opera House
- Swan Lake by Helgi Tomasson
Created by former Artistic Director of SF Ballet, Helgi Tomasson’s striking Swan Lake includes sleek set and costume designs by Tony Award winner Jonathan Fensom and is performed to Tchaikovsky’s iconic and sweeping score. It offers a rich interpretive and choreographic challenge in the dual role of innocent Odette and flamboyantly malevolent Odile.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream | March 31 – April 8, 2024
War Memorial Opera House
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream by George Balanchine
George Balanchine’s first original full-length ballet that was quickly hailed as a masterpiece, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was last performed by SF Ballet in March 2020; its run was cut short after only one opening night performance, becoming the first major production in the country to shut down in advance of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This whimsical story ballet and Shakespearean classic will make its triumphant return to the San Francisco stage, now with opulent costumes and stage design by French haute couture designer Christian LaCroix, which has only been seen in the Paris Opera Ballet’s production and will make an appearance on the U.S. stage for the first time.
next@90 Curtain Call | April 2-13, 2024
War Memorial Opera House
- Violin Concerto by Yuri Possokhov
- Gateway to the Sun by Nicolas Blanc
- MADCAP by Danielle Rowe
Violin Concerto by SF Ballet’s Choreographer in Residence Yuri Possokhov, is an homage to George Balanchine with a fresh interpretation of Igor Stravinsky’s 1931 score, which captures Possokhov’s decidedly contemporary perspective on classical dance vocabulary while showing off the steely technique and emotional breadth of SF Ballet’s dancers.
Gateway to the Sun by Nicolas Blanc, former SF Ballet principal dancer and current choreographer at The Joffrey Ballet, offers a poetic five-movement abstract ballet inspired by a Rumi poem and set to an exquisite contemporary score by Anna Clyne.
MADCAP by Danielle Rowe, a frequent SF Ballet collaborator whose theatrical and bombastic feat of storytelling invites audiences into the sinister world of clowns after the circus lights go dark, elevated by eerie, carnival-inspired music and dancer vocalizations.
Dos Mujeres | April 4-14, 2024
War Memorial Opera House
- Carmen by Arielle Smith
- Broken Wings by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa
SF Ballet will present Dos Mujeres, an exploration of Latina womanhood that marks the company’s first double-bill of female choreographers and its first program dedicated to Latinx stories.
The program will begin with a world premiere commission and reinterpretation of Carmen by rising star Arielle Smith, a Havana-born, London-based choreographer who was recently awarded an Olivier for Outstanding Achievement in Dance and named “One to Watch” by The Guardian in 2022.
Revisiting the story’s original themes, Carmen will restore agency to the iconic heroine, accompanied by Smith’s boundary-pushing, cinematic approach to choreography and the colors and sounds of Cuba, brought to life by a newly commissioned score by Grammy Award-winning jazz composer and pianist Arturo O’Farrill that incorporates Cuban folk music.
Carmen will be complemented by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Wings, a vibrant, colorful exploration of the life and surrealist art of Frida Kahlo, who lived in San Francisco in the early period of her career.
Featuring an original score interwoven with mariachi and Mexican folk music and a chorus of skeletons, Broken Wings offers a unique opportunity to enter the realms of Kahlo’s paintings through the lens of her wildly creative spirit.
Encore A | April 18-24, 2024
War Memorial Opera House
- TBD
Featured Photo for the San Francisco Ballet 2024 Season of Max Cauthorn in Blanc’s Gateway to the Sun // © Lindsay Thomas.
