SAN FRANCISCO, CA-- San Francisco Ballet, announced to the press its 2024 Repertory Season, its first under the Direction of Tamara Rojo (pictured above). Rojo is a Spanish ballet dancer, former lead and principal dancer in the United Kingdom. While at the English National Ballet from 2012-2022, she was a lead principal dancer and Artistic Director. In San Francisco, Rojo will be the first woman to lead the San Francisco Ballet, and its first new Artistic Director in nearly four decades.

"The warm welcome I've received from the San Francisco community has been truly inspiring," Rojo said, before describing her plans. For her first season as Artistic Director, she will be inviting a cross-cultural group of exceptional artists to bring their creativity and visions to her new home city, engaging with technology in new and intriguing ways, to be able to offer exciting interpretations of two Latina heroines, and create new contemporary scores.  Her first season will showcase the broad talents of SF Ballet, our world renowned company, expanding what the War Memorial Opera House, its audience, and the SF ballet itself can look like.

World's Premiere Broken Wings

Rojo's first Season will center in cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural collaborations. It will celebrate the artists and histories of San Francisco, but also spotlight its women's voices, on stage and off, and further SF Ballet's long-standing mission to balance innovation in choreography with a deeply held dedication to the classics.

The Season programs  will include:  a cutting-edge commission led by the composer Floating Points,  and World premiere commissions from female choreographers Azzure Barton and Arielle Smith, who, along with Annabelle Lopez Ochoa will re-imagine the myths of  Pandora, Carmen, and Frida Kahlo. The Season will also include two classic British ballets rarely seen by the American Audience. It will start with:

NUTCRACKER
December 13-30, 2023
SF Ballet will present Heigi Tomasson's Nutcracker, a Bay Area tradition for the past 19 years. For those unfamiliar with the Tomasson's version, we could describe it as "unique" because it is shown only in San Francisco, and because of it built  upon  the SF Ballet's legacy, for being  the first American  ballet's company in the USA to present a full-length production of the Nutcracker in 1944. The Heigi Tomasson's Nutcracker  is also a unique tribute to San Francisco. It even includes a scene based on the Conservatory of Flowers.

2024 OPENING NIGHT GALA
January 24 2024
Further details will announce on SF Ballet's 91st Season Opening Night Gala.

Floating Points and Azzure Barton's Mere Mortals (WORLD's PREMIERE)
January 26-February 1, 2024
Net year, a collective of boundary-pushing artists from around the world and across disciplines, that will be brought together by Tamara Rojo, will re-contextualize the classic parable of Pandora's Box for our modern world in Mere Mortals. This new kind of ballet experience, will marks the first full-length work SF Ballet has commissioned from a Female choreographer. The work , which may include Hi-tech, will take on the possibilities and consequences brought on by artificial intelligence.

The team will be spearheaded by composer Floating Points (A.K.A. Sam Shepherd). a U.K. based composer, producer, and DJ known equally for his headlining appearances on the electronic music festival circuit and for his contributions to contemporary classical and jazz, and Azzure Barton, the Canadian-born, internationally celebrated choreographer renowned for her innovative and interdisciplinary approach to dance.
The work, combining dance, electronic music, visual design and technology, will bring an Immersive sensory experience to the War Memorial Opera House. The design collaborators include: Barcelona-based design firm Hamil Industries, whose work emphasizes the visualization of sound with computerized, robotic and video techniques, and costumes by Michelle Jank, one of Australia's most talented and versatile Couture and costume designers who has been a collaborator of Barton for over a decade. At each performance, Floating Points will perform his compositions life, along with the S.F. Ballet orchestra. More details for the program will be forthcoming.

British Icons:
Kenneth McMillan's Song of the Earth and
Frederick Ashton's Marguerite and Armand
February 9-15, 2024
BRITISH ICONS will bring together, in one program two of the most important British ballet choreographers, Sir Kenneth MacMilland and Sir Fredrick Ashton ballets. Their work has been rarely staged in the U.S. and it had never seen before in San Francisco. Each ballet offers a striking reflection on the power of love and lost.

MacMilland Song of the Earth weaves a story of love, loss and bittersweet death through poetic and melancholy choreography, along with two live singers accompanying the Mahler song cycle Das Lied von der Erde. in which MacMilland, the leading choreographer of his time, incorporates influence from Japanese Noh and Kabuki Theater dances, to express, in movement, the beautiful profound reflection on loneliness and mortality.

As a ballet, Sir Fredrick Ashton's deeply passionate and lushly designed Marguerite and Armand (pictured above) demands top dancers for highly coveted principal roles and superb performances. The ballet, was originally created by Ashton, for ballet superstars Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fountein,  during the "Summer of Love" in 1967.

SWAN LAKE
February 23-March 3, 2024

The quintessential classical ballet, Swam Lake (picture above) performed to Tchaikovsky's Iconic and sweeping score. made its US premiere at SF Ballet in l940, where it has remained as integral part of the company's history. The San Francisco version, was Created by its former Artistic Director Heigl Thomasson, and it is an striking version. It includes an sleek set and the costume designs of Tony Award winner Jonathan Fenson.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
March 12-March 23, 2024

George Blanchine's first original full-length ballet was quickly hailed as a Masterpiece. The whimsical story, based on the Shakespearean classic will make its triumphant return with opulent costumes and stage design by French haute coutre designer Christian LaCroix.
The ballet was last performed at the SF Ballet in March of 2020, when his run was cut short after only one opening night performance, becoming the first major production in the country to shut down to the audience to protect them because of Covid 19 pandemic.

next@90 Curtain Call
Yuri Possokhov's piano concerto I Nicholas Blanc's Gateway to the Sun I Danielle Rowes MADCAP
April 2-13, 2024 (in repertory with Program 6)
The season's fifth program will bring back three highlights from 2022's next @ 90 festival, which emulate excellence in choreography and have artist ties to the SF Ballet community.

Dos Mujeres: Arielle Smith's Carmen (WORLD PREMIERE & Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's Broken Wings (North American Premiere)
April 4-14,  2024 (In repertory with Program 6)

The program will begin with a world premiere commission and reinterpretation of Carmen by rising star Arielle Smith, a Havana, Cuba-born, London-based choreographer who was recently awarded and Olivier for Outstanding Achievement in Dance and named "One to Watch" by The Guardian in 2022. Carmen, will present the iconic heroine, with a cinematic  approach in its choreography, brilliant colors in its costumes, and the exotic sounds of Cuba.

Carmen will be complimented by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's Broken Wings,a vibrant colorful exploration of the life of surrealist art of Frida Kahlo, who lived in San Francisco in the early period of her career. The ballet will feature and 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.

Subscription and Single tickets. will be available to the public later this Summer. For information visit: https://www.sfballet.org/  or call  the Ticket Services Monday through Fricas 10Am to 4 pm at 415 865-2000. SF Ballet will present Dos Mujeres, an exploration of Latina womanhood that marks the company's first double bill of female chorographers and its first program dedicated to Latino American women stories.