Alonzo King

Biography & Press :: Choreography

An Interview with 2008 Greece Tour Agent Athena Yiannaki

What are we going to see on the stage of the Thessaloniki's Concert Hall during your March performances in Greece?

What someone sees is uniquely personal and completely dependent on their ability to see. What we see with is our consciousness. Consciousness is the lens that filters whatever is in front of us. That lens is usually conditioned by society, education, customs, and whatever particular trend regarding right and wrong, superior and inferior, exist in a social construct.

What I think will be obvious is a group of artists of exceptional quality generously giving to the best of their ability and pushing the art form. There will be the masterful manipulation of time and space with music and movement.

Lines Ballet and you seem to be very interested in a so called multiculturalism. Does dance help to get to know each other better?

I am interested in the uniqueness of the individual and the commonality of the human experience. Art is the great communicator. It is thought or consciousness made visible, or audible. The writings, dances, and music of the ancients has certainly been a way for us to understand ourselves. Every culture has a unique gift to the world, and ideally it would be great to take the best of every culture. Yet within all cultures lies the uniqueness of the individual. So that even within a family of relatives it can seem that you are existing within numerous cultures of personalized views and experience.

What is more important to a dancer: technique or expression?

The most important thing to a dancer is how to communicate an idea clearly, whatever it takes. We sometimes forget that the idea comes first, and techniques are employed to bring the idea to life.

Whatever is done requires technique. There is nothing that doesn’t use technique. How we utilize eating utensils whether they be fingers, chopsticks or forks are techniques. There are also techniques that facilitate the heart’s expansion. The piano doesn’t play itself, the home doesn’t build itself, Technique and will power are inextricably linked. The archer has the the bull’s eye as his aim, and his sole concern is accuracy. Accuracy becomes your expression. Artists are concerned with the communication of ideas, and that those ideas be accurate and clearly expressed. There are still some circles of thought which seem to think that artists are involved in indulgent self expression. This is not the case. Most artists are looking for the definitive choice, the choice where the viewer upon seeing it will realize, there could have been no other choice, this is it. Self expression is dangerously close to likes and dislikes, and emotional excretions. What you want to do and what you should do can be miles apart. It is a wonderful thing to see them integrated, where there is no conflict.

Street dance on one hand and ballet on the other - could these two different worlds communicate with each other?

They actually aren’t two different worlds. The location where dance occurs has little to do with making one or the other different. What delineates difference is whether it is well or poorly done. Ballet at one time was street dance. What we term Classical Dance had it’s origin in folk dances. Folk dance, life fairy tales, have their origin in metaphysical truths.

We notice that a number of choreographers try to incorporate in their works elements from the other arts - eg even songs sung by members of their companies or theatre techniques. Do we forget "pure" dance (and I hope you see what I mean by "pure").

All the arts have proceeded from music and dance. Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey are certainly music. Dante’s Inferno is certainly dance. The elements of sound and movement, rhythm, rise and fall, crescendo are in all things. The brain moving, the heart beating, the pen writing, it’s all sound and movement. You cannot move without making sound, and you cannot make sound without some movement. Human eyes and ears are generally not as keen as the animals. Sound and movement are in all things. Even the seemingly still rocks. Science now tells us that all that exists is a manipulation of light vibrating at different rates. Pure is what has no lies in it. Pure dance is dance that tells the truth. The truth can certainly be told while someone is moving and singing. The absence of artifice is the only determination of what is pure or not pure. Gold unalloyed. There is nothing that happens alone. If one means by pure dance, dance without accompaniment, this does not exist. We are all accompanied by thought, the rushing blood, heart beat and breath, the light in any particular space, ambient and natural sound, etc.

Do politics, changes in society, the minorities and their problems influence you?

There are no minorities. And we realize now that anyone’s problem is everyone’s problem. We are all influenced by our environment to a greater or lesser extent. And the appearance of life's changing scene has been the backdrop used for countless works of art. The Bhagavad Gita is based on an actual battle that took place. But the meat of the work, it’s lessons on how life can be lived, is beyond the temporal incidents of a particular time and space.

Do you prefer to work on pieces of music written especially for the company and collaborate with the composers or on pieces of classical/jazz/contemporary music already known?

My preference is to have great music, whether it be borrowed from the ancients or created by present day composers particularly for the company.


An Interview with 2008 Canadian Tour Presenter Stephen White of Dance Victoria

In the articles I’ve read about your practice as a teacher and a choreographer, it’s clear that you have a commitment to making it possible for the dancer to bring his/her own interpretation and expression to the movement.

Part of our quest here is to solve the enigma of our own lives. Time is wasted in copying the lives of others. People who have begun the inquiry into who, and what they are, bring an unseen originality to their work, because they are dancing themselves. Character is one of the by products of honest introspection. On stage what we are observing is character, i.e., who is brave, compassionate, brilliant, humble, sincere and generous, or who is afraid, vain, hiding, etc. The mind is dancing the body, and a person’s consciousness is visible when they are dancing. Interpretation and expression without understanding is dangerous. The dancers are more concerned with illuminating an idea rather than expressing their personal feelings. Because of the depth of their movement investigations, and the clarity of their understanding, they live in the moment and the work is theirs. They own it and it sometimes appears as though it wasn’t choreographed. Everything is a collaboration. Even the mental decision to move your own body needs all parts to cooperate. A choreographer wants to collaborate with a genius. Its great to work with someone who has developed a powerful internal vision, and also has the ability to drop it and follow with simple childlike trust. The painter says that you must become the horse before you paint the horse. Its the same in all art making. The essence of things must be known, what they are and how they operate, before they can be realized. Expression alone can be an indulgence. Artists are more prone to an obsession with accuracy.

This seems in some ways to be in contrast to the control that the ballet form imposes on a dancer.

In a sense all form is an imposition. Everything that exists is trying to escape its present form into more expansion. Good classical training doesn’t impose control on a dancer, it enables control. It must be seen as a science of movement, and not a style. The absolute point of training, discipline and law, is to allow freedom. True control is internal and aligned with self mastery. What is being developed and strengthened is the mind, which controls the body.

What is it about the ballet form that appeals to you?

I am attracted to classical form because of its basis in nature and in its universal statement. The forms that we work with in what we call ballet have always existed. The Universe and the laws that govern it are replicated in classical form. Straight line and circle, magnetism, gravitational pull, balance, circumference, radius and nucleus are some of the sources of the form.

Are you interested in the tension between emotional content and form?

Yes, balance is the key word. It is a beautiful metaphor for how we live our lives, and a powerful way to show contrast. There is a constant struggle to balance logic and feeling. Too much logic and we have dry, calculated predictability, too much feeling, and there is chaotic, illegible. indulgence. Its the balancing of the Adam and Eve inherent in each of us.

Given the active role the dancer plays in the development of a choreography, do you see your role more as the steward or shaper of the work?

Choreographer and dancer is like lyricist and singer. A lyricist needs a great singer, and a singer needs a great song. And in the making and doing that occupies the lives of us humans, art is the knowledge of the best kinds of making and doing. Additionally creation is about discovery. Everything that will be invented or discovered or built, already exists. We don’t make anything, we discover.

How do you start a work?

Have to be turned on by some idea and you begin excavating. You dig. You watch and listen, and the work begins to reveal itself.

How do you remain so prolific?

There is this nudging knowing that it can all be so much more and better. So you keep on working.

What feeds you creatively?

Observing anything well done. Yoga. Nature. Introspection. The desire to give. Heroic lives. And the idea that love exists.

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