Manon: English National Ballet, London Coliseum

3:01pm Wednesday 7th January 2009

Sir Kenneth MacMillan, who died in 1992, was undoubtedly one of the great choreographers of the last century. His particular forte was expressing extreme emotions – love, lust, hate, jealousy, misery – in highly imaginative duets and trios, requiring virtuoso dancers who could also act.

It isn’t surprising, therefore, that the near-melodrama of Abbe Prevost’s story of Manon Lescaut appealed to him. The beautiful young heroine falls for the handsome student Des Grieux, but her corrupt brother Lescaut, acting as a kind of aristocratic pimp, is contracting her out to rich men, and in particular to Monsieur G.M.

Manon is no saint, though. She is enthralled by the luxury with which G.M. surrounds her, even though her love is for Des Grieux. When she leaves the obsessed G.M. for an idyllic period with Des Grieux, he has her arrested as a prostitute, and deported to New Orleans. Des Grieux accompanies her, kills her gaoler and leads her into the swamps of Louisiana. There, worn out by her experiences, she dies in his arms.

ENB is fortunate to have one of the greatest dance partnerships in the world – the Estonian husband and wife team of Thomas Edur and Agnes Oaks. In this work Edur is marvellous – noble, ardent, loving, despairing – but the ballet belongs to the character of Manon, and Agnes Oaks is magnificent. This is a complex role. She is part innocent, part wordly-wise, deeply in love yet easily seduced by wealth and its trappings. When G.M. gives her a floor-length fur coat and a sparkling necklace she is practically orgasmic in her excitement, yet she is also able to convey the strength of her love, and a burgeoning self-disgust over the life she has chosen. This, let’s face it, is a ballet about sex, and if you want sexy, just look at Agnes Oaks as she goes through a series of extraordinary poses and lifts, one flowing into another, either with the man she loves, or in a sensuous trio in which her brother displays her as a sex object to G.M., who is beside himself as he is allowed to kiss her foot for the first time, and slide her dress up her leg. From the opening street scene with beggars and prostitutes, to the final scenes of prison and death, this work is MacMillan’s masterpiece. There is nothing superfluous here; it moves to its tragic conclusion in a series of highly imaginative dances that make you marvel at the richness of the choreographer’s invention.

Manon runs until Sunday at the Coliseum. It will be at the New Theatre, Oxford, from April 21-25. Do not miss this wonderful work.