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LINES Ballet, a celebrated international touring company based in San Francisco, performs unique contemporary ballets created by Alonzo King. Established 26 years ago, LINES Ballet continues to receive acclaim for Alonzo King's visionary choreography, and for the extraordinary quality of its dancers. When not on tour——performing in venues from the Venice Biennale to the Movimentos Festival in Germany to Montpellier Danse——the Company also appears onstage during spring and fall home seasons in San Francisco, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Collaborating with noted composers, musicians, and visual artists, Alonzo King creates works that draw on a diverse set of deeply rooted cultural traditions and imbue classical ballet with new expressive potential. Alonzo King's choreography is renowned for its ability to connect audiences to a profound sense of shared humanity——of vulnerability and tenderness, but also of furious abandon and exhilarating freedom.
In June 2008, Alonzo King was honored with the Jacob's Pillow Creativity Award, in recognition of his contribution to "moving ballet in a very 21st-century direction." This is the third major award bestowed upon Mr. King in three years, following the US Artists Fellowship (given to the 50 finest artists from all disciplines currently creating work in America), and the Bessie Award for Choreographer/Creator. He has also been the recipient of the NEA Choreographer's Fellowship, the Irvine Dance Fellowship, and five Isadora Duncan awards. Last fall, dancer Meredith Webster became the fifth Company dancer to receive the coveted Princess Grace Award.
In 2001, the LINES Ballet School was established, in order to develop the potential of young dancers. LINES Ballet continues its commitment to dance education and community involvement through the San Francisco Dance Center, now one of the largest dance facilities on the West Coast. In Fall 2006, LINES Ballet embarked on a partnership with the Dominican University of California, inaugurating the Joint BFA Program in Dance; this is the only Joint BFA program in the country to be led by an active, world-renowned choreographer.
This fall, LINES Ballet will premiere a new collaboration with Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. "The spirit tells me what to do and that's it," Sanders says of creating music for LINES Ballet. With electrifying, raw grace, and a harmonic depth that goes down to the very last note, Sanders can crack the air open like blue-white lightning; the resonances linger to drench the stage, like rain that has been a long time coming.
Click here to read our 2006/07 Annual Report
