Sir Kenneth MacMillan based his ballet Manon on a 1731 novel by the Abbé Prévost. The score was created from music by Jules Massenet, and the premiere, 50 years ago in 1974, starred one of the Royal Ballet’s most beloved partnerships—Antoinette Sibley as Manon and Anthony Dowell as Des Grieux. Of the ballet’s impulsive heroine, MacMillan once said, “Manon is not so much afraid of being poor as ashamed of being poor. Poverty in that period was the equivalent of long, slow death.” And so she leaves her first love, Des Grieux, to go live in luxury with the rich Monsieur G. M. The ballet has a variety of juicy roles and the pas de deux are stunningly, sensually impassioned. MacMillan did not shy away from dark doings in his ballets, and his Manon, which many thought immoral back in the day (Mary Clarke: “Manon is a slut and Des Grieux is a fool”), goes for truth above all. —Laura Jacobs