San Francisco Ballet Tickets

The company was established in the early 1930s and was called the San Francisco Opera Ballet. The organization’s aim was to act as a top-rated training facility for talented aspiring dancers. These budding artists would receive thorough instruction in the discipline so as to enable them to appear in some of the biggest and most important opera productions in America, or even the world.

For the first eight years of its existence, the San Francisco Opera Ballet was a subsidiary of the San Francisco Opera. During this time, the company staged its first ever full-length production, Coppélia, and gained recognition for being the first company to do the original versions of Swan Lake and Nutcracker in their entirety. All three of these ballets were choreographed by the late William Christensen, who was a legend in his own right for establishing, among other things, a national tradition of staging major shows during the Christmas holidays.

Following this promising start, the company became a self-sustaining troupe and rebranded itself as the San Francisco Ballet . Thereon, William Christensen became the company’s artistic director and was later joined by his brothers Harold and Lew, two major figures in the country’s mid-20th century dance movement, in other administrative roles. Lew, who was the first ever premier danseur of America, eventually replaced his brother as artistic director and helped elevate the San Francisco Ballet to new heights. Under his leadership, the company toured eleven Asian countries, which marked the first time ever in the history of American ballet that a domestic troupe visited that particular region of the globe.

Over the next several years and throughout the 1970s, the San Francisco Ballet continued it successful streak. The company permanently settled in the War Memorial Opera House and saw yet another change in leadership. In 1976, the San Francisco Ballet staged a critically acclaimed production of Romeo and Juliet, which was broadcasted on PBS, a first for a West Coast dance organization. Continuing the trend of live broadcasts, the televised version of the company’s 1981 production of The Tempest was nominated for three Emmy awards out of which it won in the category of Outstanding Costume Design. The San Francisco Ballet’s next Emmy came a few years later, when Michael Smuin won for his choreography in A Song for Dead Warriors, which in turn was broadcasted as part of the TV show "Great Performances: Dance in America."

The San Francisco Ballet has amassed many honors and accolades over the course of the nearly eight decades it has existed. It has undertaken several foreign tours, staging shows in such prominent venues as the Theatre Opéra de Paris-Palais Garnier in Paris, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, the Megaron Theatre in Athens along with the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells in London. The company has performed twice at the Sadler’s Well and broke the venue’s single-day box office records during its second time there.

The current artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet is Helgi Tomasson - one of the best performers of the previous century - whose appointment has led to yet another glorious period in the company’s history.

Now, the San Francisco Ballet is a veritable world-class art collective and presents almost as a hundred shows each year. The company has expanded its repertory significantly over the better part of a century that it has been active and continues to devote itself to the enrichment of dance-related arts. The company’s productions are lavish and breathtaking to behold, a fact which its countless admirers would happily confirm. These fans can now get the San Francisco Ballet tickets for the company’s upcoming line-up of events.