La Sylphide is one of the oldest ballets still being performed, but that’s not what stands out when you’re watching it.
Coming in as one of the earlier programs in the season, it dates back to the mid-1800s and is often cited as the first ballet to center pointe work as a defining element of a character. You feel that history right away, but it never feels distant.
The run at the War Memorial Opera House is short, just under a week, but the production doesn’t treat it that way. It fills the room.
There was a moment early in the first act where it clicked in a different way. I hadn’t just seen this ballet before, I had been in it. When I was younger, portions of La Sylphide were staged by the school I trained with, which makes sense given how the ballet is structured. It naturally mixes levels. Students, character performers, and the main company all share the stage, and when it works, it creates something fuller than a standard ensemble.
That’s exactly what happens here.
Members of the San Francisco Ballet School join the company onstage, and it adds density without slowing anything down. The larger court scenes feel abundant instead of crowded, and there’s a kind of visual richness that comes from having that many bodies moving together with purpose.
The setting does a lot of work too. Highland Scotland comes through clearly in the costuming, with layered tartans, kilts, sashes, and romantic-length skirts that move constantly. That silhouette goes back to ballerina Marie Taglioni and the shift toward showing footwork en pointe more clearly. You see that here. The choreography reads cleanly because the design allows it to.
And underneath all of that, there’s something more familiar going on.
A lot of the dancing, especially in the larger group sections, feels rooted in folk structure in the way movement builds out of people being together. Celebration, reaction, shared rhythm. The more people on stage, the more it expands.
Guest principal Alban Lendorf, who also appeared with the company last season in Manon, takes on the role of James. The style fits him. Quick footwork, clean jumps, control without weight. The choreography itself avoids heavy partnering, which puts more pressure on individual movement, and he handles that well.
Opposite him, Wona Park as the Sylph is exactly what the role needs, but even that feels like an understatement. She’s light in a way that doesn’t read as effort. More like whipped cream, angel food cake, cotton candy, something that almost disappears as you’re watching it but still leaves a shape behind. And her jetés are some of the most beautiful in the entire production, clean, suspended, and placed exactly where they need to be without ever feeling forced.
Carmela Mayo as Effie is what keeps the whole thing from floating away. There’s a steadiness to her performance that doesn’t try to compete with the spectacle around it. She just stays rooted in it, and because of that, every choice James makes lands harder. You don’t just see what he’s chasing, you see what he’s walking away from. You actually feel the loss because she never lets it become abstract.
The production also makes an effort outside the stage.
Before the performance, live bagpipes carry across the steps of the Opera House. It’s a small detail, but it sets the tone immediately. The company has been doing more of this throughout the season, building out the experience around the performance, and here it actually connects to what you’re about to see instead of feeling added on.
The second act shifts everything. The forest scenes lean toward something closer to Giselle, not in structure, but in feeling. The light drops, the white skirts take over, and the space itself feels altered, like it’s no longer grounded in the same reality as the first act. The Sylphs drift through it, not quite touching anything, separate from the world they’ve pulled James into. That’s where the story lands.
James isn’t chasing something out of reach, he’s chasing something he doesn’t understand, and the moment he tries to control it, it collapses. The ending doesn’t feel exaggerated or overly dramatic. It just plays out the way it has to.
What stands out is how little this needs to be adjusted to still work. The structure is old. The story is simple. But the core idea holds. Dissatisfaction, projection, wanting something that isn’t meant to be held. None of that has aged out.
And because so many of the roles share the same visual language, individuality shows up in smaller ways. Expression, timing, intention. The Corps carries a lot of that, and it keeps the stage from ever feeling flat.
For anyone new to ballet, this is an easy place to start. The story is clear, the tone is accessible, and the pacing carries you through without dragging. One intermission, nothing extra.
For everyone else, it begins to read a little differently, as something still being used. A ballet like this doesn’t last this long by accident. Over time it becomes a kind of container, holding generations of dancers, guest artists passing through, different bodies and interpretations moving through the same structure without ever quite replacing it.
And when everyone is dressed the same, moving through the same choreography, that’s when you can really see whose true artistry shines through. Not in anything overt, but in the details. The phrasing, the length of a line, the timing of a glance, the way a moment is held or released. What looks uniform at a distance starts to separate the closer you pay attention. The Corps stops feeling like a single surface and starts to break into individual voices.
At that point, it stops belonging to any one version of itself. It becomes something that’s carried, each time a little different, but still recognizably whole.
A reminder that a ballet this old doesn’t need to be reinvented to feel alive. It just needs to be done well.
La Sylphide runs through April 16, 2026, at the War Memorial Opera House, with tickets available through the San Francisco Ballet website.
Featured image credit: Lindsay Rallo
