In the likes of Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty love is an ideal. It’s beautiful and romantic and pure. Kenneth MacMillan wasn’t having any of that. His Manon is a love story but doesn’t pretend to be all high-minded when body is pressed intimately against body, which is so often the case in Manon. This ballet is about sex: sex as power, as need, as currency, as natural impulse and as a force that can destroy.

The Australian Ballet’s Manon: Robyn Hendricks and Callum Linnane. Photo © Kate Longle

Manon, a young woman inexperienced in the ways of the world, has two choices. One is a rapturous, love-at-first-sight union with an impecunious student; the other is a glamorous but equivocal life under the protection of a rich older man, a situation engineered for profit by her own brother. 

She vacillates between both paths and they collide with predictably tragic consequences.

The story unfolds in a series of pas de deux for the title character and her young lover des Grieux as well as a number of close encounters with others. The first pulsate with longing; the second posit Manon as a chattel. They couldn’t be more different and the tension between the two is where the drama gets its crackle.

The Australian Ballet’s Manon: Callum Linnane and Robyn Hendricks. Photo © Kate Longle

The Australian Ballet has been dancing the piece since 1994 and its list of Manons is a list of the company’s most individual stars. The ballet suits the company as a whole too. The stage teems with vitality as Manon’s 18th-century setting comes zestily and colourfully to life. MacMillan certainly over-stuffed Manon with extraneous activity, but there is pleasure in peeking into corners to get a glimpse of what’s happening.

Too much simply isn’t enough for MacMillan. The concept of guilty pleasure could have been created just for this sprawling, opulent ballet. The designs are lavish; there’s a glamorous, swoony score stitched together from bits and pieces by Massenet; detailed set pieces for large groups; and, above all, those glorious pas de deux.

I saw two casts in Melbourne. Opening night was headed by Robyn Hendricks with fellow principal artist Callum Linnane as des Grieux. At the first matinee coryphée Grace Carroll made her role debut as Manon, partnered by senior artist Davi Ramos. Carroll’s name often comes up as a dancer to watch and in Melbourne earlier this year, she stood out as an exquisite Romola in Nijinsky. 

Both Hendricks and Carroll proved just how flexible the ballet is when it comes to interpretation. It’s why the title role is so coveted.

Hendricks’s Manon was alert, inquisitive and quick to understand the allure of sexual conquest. Even when Manon and Linnane’s des Grieux were widely separated, you could feel their connection in slow-burning glances at 50 paces. 

For Hendricks it wasn’t a huge leap to go from there to being persuaded to throw her lot in with Monsieur G.M. and his offer of furs and jewels (former TAB principal Adam Bull was wonderful casting here). Here was a rich, powerful man who literally kissed her feet, and she liked it.

Carroll’s Manon was delicate, innocent and obedient, shrinking from the seamier circumstances she found herself in. When she had become Monsieur G.M.’s possession, she had the air of a girl groomed and coached for his pleasure. 

With Ramos as her tender des Grieux, Carroll’s gentleness could blossom into pleasure. Hendricks and Linnane, who was making his debut as des Grieux, were more overtly sensual. Hendricks was like luxurious silk; Carroll floated like the airiest thistledown. 

The Australian Ballet’s Manon: Robyn Hendricks. Photo © Kate Longle

The important secondary roles of Manon’s brother and his lover, brutally identified only as Lescaut’s Mistress, were powerfully taken by Maxim Zenin and Isobelle Dashwood (first cast) and Marcus Morelli and Rina Nemoto (second cast). Zenin’s reptilian smoothy and Morelli’s scrappy bruiser were equally valid and the women put up with them with every resource they had. 

Leading men Linnane and Ramos both had a few moments of unsteadiness in their difficult opening adagio, Linnane more than Ramos, but were thrilling in support of their Manon. There’s no show without that rapport.

With Orchestra Victoria and conductor Charles Barker in the pit for opening night, the music sounded beyond luscious, as it did again at the first matinee performance when Nathaniel Griffiths conducted. Griffiths is TAB’s current Robert and Elizabeth Albert Conducting Fellow, and it was touching to see OV orchestra members applaud when he took his bow with the cast. 

On opening night, TAB artistic director David Hallberg dedicated the Melbourne Manon season to Colin Peasley, who died on 2 September at the age of 90. He was in the company’s first performance in 1962, TAB’s longest-serving member, a generous contributor to its education program and a great character. Manon leaps off the stage with urgency; it’s a fine tribute.

Manon is at the Regent Theatre, Melbourne, until October 22.