San Francisco Ballet

Deemed “strikingly modern [and] technically stunning” (Daily Californian), the nation’s longest-running professional ballet company will return to the site of its heralded East Coast debut this summer after a 70-year absence. Led by Artistic Director and former Artistic Director of London’s English National Ballet Tamara Rojo, San Francisco Ballet will come to Jacob’s Pillow for the first time since 1956 to perform a mixed program featuring works from the classical ballet canon and works by Hans van Manen, George Balanchine, Tamara Rojo, and Ben Stevenson.

In an expansive two-stage engagement, San Francisco Ballet will perform different programs on the outdoor Henry J. Leir Stage and in the Ted Shawn Theatre in the same week. Audiences interested in attending both programs will be able to enjoy the full outdoor performance in time to view the indoor performance.

San Francisco Ballet is a world-leading ballet company and a trailblazing commissioner, collaborator, and presenter in dance. Along with American Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet, the company has been described in the "triumvirate of great classical companies defining the American style on the world stage today” (The Observer).

Since its founding in 1933 (the same year Jacob’s Pillow was founded), the company has been an innovator in the art form and an originator of beloved cultural traditions, from staging the first American production of Swan Lake to bringing an annual holiday Nutcracker to U.S. audiences. With a deep commitment to new and contemporary works and the classical repertoire, San Francisco Ballet invests in commissions and acquisitions, presents established and emerging choreographers, uplifts creatives across disciplines, and cultivates the next generation of the world’s top dancers in its San Francisco Ballet School.

"Triumvirate of great classical companies defining the American style on the world stage today”

The Observer