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Press
Reviews
• Boston Globe (USA)
The message is in the MOVEMENT
January 22, 2010
"On the dark stage, a dancer moves deliberately within the confines of a rectangle of light, extending her arms as if she is swimming through air. Leaning forward, she travels a few steps in a crouch before rising on pointe and gesturing like an animal flaunting its power....
read more>>
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (USA)
LINES Ballet produces thoughtful program
January 18, 2010
"His style, which stretches ballet to new limits, has taken on a global range and his dancers have achieved a comfort level in the abundant terpsichorean playground that he has created for them. King is a living encyclopedia of dance that can't be tapped in one evening. Friday night's program at the August Wilson Center offered...
read more>>
• Pittsburgh Tribune (USA)
Alonzo King's Lines Ballet bold, inventive
January 18, 2010
"The dance offered by Alonzo King's Lines Ballet is incessantly exhilarating, filled with bold, broad gestures that are themselves full of intriguing nuance. At Friday night's performance of two of King's ballets...
read more>>
• Pittsburgh City Paper (USA)
Alonzo King's LINES Ballet brings a new work, and a revised one, to Pittsburgh.
January 14, 2010
"To many choreographers, even a dance work that is "done" is never truly complete. There are always changes to be made to accommodate different performers, or revisions for clarity.
Such is the case with San Francisco-based choreographer Alonzo King and his Signs and Wonders...
read more>>
•
Monaco-Matin (France)
Monaco Dance Forum:
Alonzo King…. Royal!
December 11, 2009
"A glorious opening night at the Monaco Dance Forum on Friday!
Alonzo King's ballets were truly worthy of a king. The evening featured two
performances: Dust and Light and Scheherazade, the second a world premiere.
The title of the first ballet, Dust and Light, describes in itself the magic of
Alonzo King’s dancers. They belong to the realm of the sun as well as that of
the earth...
read more>>
• San Francisco Chronicle (USA)
Alonzo King's 'Refraction' dazzling jazz ballet
October 27,2009
"There's a whiff of pensive yearning, even nostalgia, to "Refraction," which Alonzo King's Lines Ballet premiered on Friday night at the Yerba Buena Center's Novellus Theater. Casual intensity weaves in and out constantly...
read more>>
• Voice of Dance (USA)
In A Mellow Mood
October 26,2009
"It seems more than a bit irreverent to refer to the “Alonzo King experience” as if it were one of those intensive long-weekend self-help seminars offered in some town on the windswept Northern California coast. But choreographer King hasn’t achieved his international reputation without meeting certain expectations. He met them again Friday...
read more>>
• Piedmont Post (USA)
Dancing to the light of Jason Moran
October 24,2009
"For his fall 2009 season Alonzo King, the choreographer who likes to collaborate with the world, has chosen a closer-to-home partner for his premier piece. New York–based jazz pianist Jason Moran composed the music that accompanies King’s new ballet Refraction, a meditation in shifting space and form performed by the gorgeously limbed dancers of Lines Ballet...
read more>>
•
Haaretz (Israel)
Multi-ethnic ballet
June 8, 2009
"It was a pleasure to see the dancers and the original choreography of the LINES Ballet. The first thing that caught the eye was hte composition of the eight-member troupe: mostly men, with a prominent African-American representation. This troupe's style is based on classical ballet open to assimilation and enrichment from other cultures...
read more>>
•
il Manifesto (Italy)
Adda Danza: Memory and Future Rhythms
June 7, 2009
"There is only one company invited from abroad to perform at
the festival this year, but this one is a leading light in the dance
world: Lines Ballet of San Francisco, headed by the African-
American artist Alonzo King, who finds great inspiration in the
Baroque and in the interconnections between languages....
read more>>
•
Il Sole 24 ORE (Italy)
Onstage now: Alonzo, the King of the Dance
June 7, 2009
"The African-American artist Alonzo King belongs to the category of
choreographers who, after years of creating ballets, is only now receiving due
recognition for his talent. Only in the past few years has King come to be
considered in the US as carrying on the legacy of Arthur Mitchell. As a young
dancer, King was mentored by Mitchell, and also performed with his company,
Dance Theatre of Harlem...
read more>>
•
Corriere Della Sera (Italy)
Infinite Gestures and Impalpable Geometrics for Alonzo the King
June 2, 2009
"The potentially infinite arcs traced by the dancers’ gestures are paired
with complicated steps that are never compromised, which surprise the audience
by suddenly involving elbows and knees; by becoming aerial geometries drawn
by legs and bodies that open like compasses, in a continual rhythm of whirling,
leaping, grasping and intertwining, holding and abandoning...
read more>>
•
The New York Times
When Somber Sounds Are Heard, Something Spiritual Arises
May 7, 2009
"Alonzo King is an interesting phenomenon. His work is balletic in some ways and curvaceously contemporary in others, creating a movement vocabulary that mines William Forsythe's hyper-extended, improbable shapes and forms; the undulating, grounded motifs of African dance; and shuddering, jittering, twitchy-gestured inventions of his own...
read more>>
•
The Star Ledger
Extreme dance: The off-balance edgy choreography of Alonzo King
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
"The master of a clean-cut style of dancing all his own, choreographer Alonzo King has brought his LINES Ballet from San Francisco. The troupe received a hero's welcome when it opened Tuesday at the Joyce Theater and the sweaty artists deserved their accolade. This phenomenal evening divided between two works, the recently premiered "Dust and Light" (2009) and "Rasa" (2007), may turn out to be one of the best programs we will see all year...
read more >>
• 7x7 blog
Anything But Straight: Alonzo King's LINES Ballet
Thursday, April 24, 2009
"Ethereal hardly begins to describe the performances by Alonzo King's eight classically trained LINES dancers (the ninth dancer, Laurel Keen, was absent due to injury) in last night's three-piece set at YBCA's Novellus Theater...
read more >>
•
The San Francisco Chronicle
LINES Ballet springs forward with grace, whimsy
April 20, 2009
"Perhaps a top dance company is not so different from a top restaurant - the key to success is consistency in the kitchen. Home season after home season, LINES Ballet consistently serves up stunningly soul-laid bare dancing, and the spring season that opened Friday is no exception...
read more >>
•
Berkshire Eagle Online
Diamond Cutters In Dance
Saturday, July 26, 2008
"These dancers could cut diamonds" was the way Jacob's Pillow director Ella Baff introduced the dance of Alonzo King's LINES Ballet Company." No better description is needed. Across their ranks, these exceptionally tall, rangy performers stab, pierce, and slice the space around them for multi-faceted ballet that sends out sparks. And once again, in this international festival season, the music is full partner to the dance, as vivid as to seem a physical presence onstage...
read more >>
•
The Rogovoy Report
Alonzo King's Lines Ballet at Jacob's Pillow
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Alonzo King's Lines Ballet performed two stunning, vital, wholly original works of modern ballet last night, as it will continue to do through July 27. Rarely if ever does this dancegoer immediately wish he could see a dance again, repeated immediately, but in the case of Migration, which opened the program, I wasn't alone in feeling there was so much to take in, so much beauty to absorb, so much color to appreciate, so much athletic grace to marvel over, that it was impossible to get it all in just one sitting...
read more >>
•
MidiLibre.com, Montpellier
The Expression of Emotions, King and the Shaolin monks
Tuesday, July 5, 2008
The Corum Theater was sold out, yesterday, for the premiere of Long River, High Sky, performed by Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet. This event was long-awaited and much talked about, as once again the San Francisco-based choreographer daringly overturned conventions by inviting to the stage, alongside his dancers, a group of artists who are hardly dancers in the usual sense of the word: in this case, seven Shaolin monks...
read more >>
•
San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate.com
When Dancers Hit Stage with Martial Artists, it's a Real Kick
May 30, 2008
Usually the phrase "back by popular demand" is just so much marketing spin, but apparently the word really has gotten out about Lines Ballet's collaboration with Shaolin monks. This week's entire encore run of "Long River High Sky" at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater is sold out, and Wednesday's opening-night audience was on its feet the moment the curtain fell...
read more >>
•
Contra Costa Times
Lines Ballet Leaps Back Into Kung Fu Collaboration
May 31, 2008
San Francisco's Lines Ballet has never been a stranger to cross-cultural collaboration. Long before mixing idioms was commonplace in the concert hall, company founder and artistic director Alonzo King began to inflect ballet with fractured, zigzagging shapes that held echoes of Asia, Indonesia and Africa...
read more >>
•
DanceViewTimes
Meditation Through Movement
May 30, 2008
It’s not difficult to understand why LINES Ballet packed them in at the reprise of “Long River, High Sky”, Alonzo King’s 2007 collaboration with wushu practicing Shaolin monks from China. The almost two-hour East meets West show proved that under the right circumstances different cultures indeed can meet...
read more >>
•
Ballet.co.uk
Lines Ballet with Shaolin Monks ‘Long River, High Sky’
May 31, 2008
Given classical en haut epaulement with bends, reaches and waist or hips as fulcrum characteristic of Alonzo King’s choreography, which also eschews eye contact, contrasted with the forceful jumps, turns and flips of the Shaolin monks, it seemed filigree meeting ch’i...
read more >>
•
San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate.com
Lines Ballet celebrates 25 years with two world premieres
Nov 5, 2007
In a quarter-century, Alonzo King's small, sleek company has risen from
playing tiny theaters to touring the country and now the world; worked
with a dazzling array of musical collaborators hailing from Morocco,
Central Africa, Japan and beyond; and essentially, through these nine
dancers' twisted, tangled movement and King's earnest yet urgent
spirituality, broken the mold of what ballet can be...
read more >>
•
Voice of Dance
Anniversary Waltz
Nov 13, 2007
No single-choreographer company hereabouts (certainly not in the ballet
sphere) has soared so irresistibly and kept its place at the top. No
other troupe has produced so many dances over two-plus decades. In
those 25 years, King has refined his extreme classicism...
read more >>
•
DanceViewTimes
A Quarter of a Century Young
Nov 2, 2007
Towards the end of this breathtaking music/dance interaction became so
intense that the dancers--taking turns in every faster
variations--seemed to atomize in front of our eyes.
read more >>
•
Le Monde
A Dream As Dance
July 3, 2007
[Alonzo King] possesses a sort of magical science of gesture and
spatiality. The technique is classically based--the women are en
pointe--but the capacity for choreographic innovation is boundless.
The cascades of steps, flooding the stage, fill the body entirely.
read more >>
• San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate.com
'Retired' S.F. ballerina dazzles with Lines troupe in Europe
June 30, 2007
Muriel Maffre's retirement didn't last long. The French-born, longtime San Francisco Ballet principal, who took her last bow with the company in early May, has re-established her connection with Alonzo King's Lines Ballet.
read more >>
• San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate.com
Ballet and kung fu well-matched dance partners in Lines premiere
April 16, 2007
For those who don't know, it's worth stating plainly: Alonzo King is the real deal as a choreographer, one of the few bona fide visionaries in the ballet world today, and we are fortunate to have him and his Lines Ballet in San Francisco.
read more >>
• La Provincia
King: The Classic That Transforms
February 25, 2007
Electrifying, playful, stylistically perfect and strangely new: this is the eclectic style of Alonzo King, the African-American choreographer who opens the “Rassegna La Danza” series with two Italian premieres of his work. These pieces, Migration and Sky Clad, near-paradigmatic testaments to a choreographic language born of academic ballet, but one which grafts onto this base not only contemporary influences, but also the commingling of many cultures and many traditions.
read more >>
• San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate.com
Panel asks: just what is black
dance?
January 28, 2007
A lot has changed since Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus took the 1940s concert dance world by storm, since Arthur Mitchell startled audiences by partnering white ballerinas at the New York City Ballet, since Donald McKayle created "Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder" to protest injustices in the South.
read more >>
San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate.com
Ballet: Last Frontier
January 27, 2007
Growing up, Aesha Ash knew that black women were rare in American ballet companies. But joining the corps of New York City Ballet, the troupe created by 20th century dance behemoth George Balanchine, was still a shock.
read more >>
• SanDiego.com
Alonzo King's Lines Ballet at California Center for the Arts
October 3, 2006
As a critic, it's my policy not to join a standing ovation unless half the audience members are already on their feet—I don't want to "make the news" of an ovation by starting one. But it was hard not to leap from my seat at the end of the transcendent "Sky Clad" by Alonzo King's Lines Ballet.
read more >>
• The New York Sun
Another Big Five-Course Meal
October 5, 2006
First up was Alonzo King's LINES Ballet, a San Francisco troupe full of gorgeous, lithe dancers.
read more >>
• San Francisco Chronicle
Saturday, April 15, 2006
By Rachel Howard, Special to The Chronicle
Lines Ballet steps into wondrous, foreign world with favorite work...
read
more >>
• Dance Review: Alonzo King's LINES Ballet,
2006 Spring Home Season
Monday, April 17, 2006
By Allan Ulrich, Voice of Dance
The 10 dancers add up to the slickest, sleekest, most alluring collection
of-movement...
read
more >>
• Dance Review: LINES in perfect balance
Monday, October 03, 2005
By Jane Vranish, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Few companies deliver a "wow factor" like
Alonzo King's LINES Ballet...
read
more >>
• Alonzo King's LINES Ballet
Stacy Ashley | In the Spotlight, Inc.
When going to see a ballet company, there is a certain amount of expectation.
The music, choreography, costumes...
read
more >>
• HANDEL-ING MODERN BALLET, OLD MOROCCO
Paul Hertelendy| artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco
Bay Area music & dance
Week of Nov. 6-15, 2005 Vol. 8, No. 39
Mix up modern ballet with traditional Moroccan music and you have a
wild, high-energy fling with dancers all but flying off the stage...
read
more >>
• C Magazine
Taking Shape: San Francisco's LINES Ballet company leaps to uncharted heights with bold new dance interpretations
March, 2010
Tucked away in a less-than-posh building at the intersection of Seventh and Market streeets in San Francisco, the artistic director of LINES Ballet stands before 20 arts patrons. Wearing an East African Kofia hat and smiling beneficently, Alonzo King tells the audience about his interpretation of the famous Arabian tale "Scheherazade".
read more>
• Pittsburgh Cross Currents
On Stage: King of the World
January 15, 2010
Yes, his women perform mostly in pointe shoes and the style is undeniably a variation on the off-center exploration employed by Balanchine. His company begins with ballet barre. But he fudgesthe description on the company website, calling it “contemporary ballet.”
King wants to put it all to rest during a recent phone conversation. “Ballet is a misnomer,” he begins in his robust voice.
read more>
• Pittsburgh Tribune
Lines Ballet offers 'Signs and Wonders' at August Wilson Center
January 13, 2010
For choreographer Alonzo King, founder of San Francisco's Lines Ballet company, the audience has an essential role to play in any performance.
"Everyone, when looking at ballet, has to meet it and experience it directly, without a docent. It seems so odd to me to play beautiful music in the background, to have Bach on and not really listen. No, you have to participate," he believes.
read more>
• San Francisco Chronicle
An intense week overseas with 'Scheherazade'
December 19, 2009
Les Ballets Russes' 20-year blaze across Europe spawned masterpieces, caused riots and set the future for Western theatrical dance. The modus operandi for this groundbreaking company was collaboration, and to that end Impresario Serge Diaghilev engaged the brightest luminaries redirecting 20th century art.
read more>
• SF Appeal
Dance Flash: An Interview with Alonzo King
October 21, 2009
Artistic director Alonzo King's new work features a collaboration with jazz pianist Jason Moran, who has performed alongside some of today's jazz greats including Ravi Coltrane and Cassandra Wilson. The Jason Moran Trio will be accompanying the performance opening weekend.
read more>
• San Francisco Chronicle Dateboook
Alonzo King Lines Ballet season to premiere
October 18, 2009
Since founding the company in 1982 with Robert Rosenwasser and Pam Hagen, King has fostered a unique company style that is distinctive and difficult to qualify - as cross-cultural as San Francisco itself, but with a sleek cosmopolitan polish that has attracted admirers from Paris to Jerusalem, New York to Guatemala City.
read more>
•
Greenvilleonline.com
Ballet Pays Tribute to Choreographer
February 1, 2009
The foundation on which American dance master and teacher Alonzo King builds his choreography comes from a conviction that genuine expressions of art rise from the performer's inner core. Superficiality will not do for the San Francisco-based founder of LINES Ballet, whose works are performed by companies throughout the world, from the Alvin Ailey Company to the Joffrey, Hong Kong and Swedish Royal Ballets.
read more >
•
San Francisco Sentinel
Alonzo King Receives 2nd Annual Mayor's Art Award
October 1, 2008
“Alonzo King is a San Francisco treasure, embodying the best of San Francisco, the creative excellence and diverse culture of this city,” said Mayor Newsom. “He has given equally to the dance community internationally and the community at-large here in San Francisco, and I am honored to bestow the 2nd Annual Mayor’s Art Award in his name.”
read more >
•
The New York Sun
Jacob's Pillow Creativity Award to Alonzo King
June 12, 2008
Shaolin monks, jazz musicians, and the Pygmies of Central Africa are just some of the people choreographer Alonzo King has invited onstage to perform with the classically trained dancers of his LINES Ballet, the company he founded 26 years ago in San Francisco. These collaborations have helped establish Mr. King internationally as a choreographer and teacher who simultaneously embraces classical ballet and other forms of dance and movement. And now they've helped him become the recipient of the second annual Jacob's Pillow Award for Creativity...
read more >
•
Examiner.com
Martial Arts and Dance Meld Into One
May 26, 2008
Lines Ballet director Alonzo King explains how his troupe came to collaborate with the Shaolin monks on “Long River High,” a production that returns for a second year beginning Wednesday. He says: “An acquaintance brought the monks by our studio, we traded some movements and that was it, I canceled the project I had planned and said, I want to work on this. The bottom line is that they are beautiful movers.”
read more >
•
San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate.com
Alonzo King's Ballet Turns 25
Oct 28, 2007
The changes that quarter century have brought are astonishing: Lines is
now internationally renowned... King's style, so nascent 25 years ago,
is now fully formed and instantly recognizable: classical, yet tangled
and twisted, exquisitely weird shapes melting into vulnerable human
gestures.
read more >
•
Ebony
King of Dance: Alonzo King and his LINES Ballet mark 25
Nov 11, 2007
Since its inception in 1982, critics and dance lovers alike have
praised LINES for its global and artistic vision as well as its
technical virtuosity.
read more >
•
Voice of Dance
Another Year, Another 10
Dec 20, 2007
The anniversary of the year was LINES Ballet's 25th. That this
single-choreographer contemporary ballet troupe has continued to
prosper in grave financial times is attributable entirely to founding
artistic director Alonzo King's artistry and to the support he has
mustered within the community. Considering how many companies initially
blossom and wither on the vine, King's steady rise and his refusal to
diverge from his aesthetic principles is a continuing source of wonder.
read more >
•
San Francisco Bay Guardian
King of the Dance: A True Innovator Celebrates 25-plus Years of Ballet and Beyond
Oct 31, 2007
Aside from his choreography, King's greatest contribution might turn
out to be his challenging of preconceptions about dance, specifically
ballet. To question the status quo is perhaps the birthright of this son
and grandson of prominent civil rights leaders in Albany, Ga...
read more >
•
Dance Magazine
Breathtaking Lines: 25 years of Alonzo King's Vision
Nov 1, 2007
[Audiences] are drawn to King's daring, skewed classicism, his arresting
choice of music, his enveloping sensuality, and the experience of watching
dancers simultaneously stretch their limbs and expose their souls in public.
read more >
•
Alonzo King has an angular approach to choreography
North Country Times
September 27, 2006
Reflecting the passion of a geometry professor, choreographer Alonzo King has an uncanny appreciation for lines and how their combinations create shapes out of the human form.
read more >
• Finding Her Way
Rachel Howard | San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Aesha Ash was ready to quit dancing six months ago. Then she met Alonzo
King...
read
more >>
• Alonzo King: Dancing with the Moon
Nicole Plett | Dance Advance
It’s midmorning in a sunlight-drenched, second-floor dance studio
at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts...
read
more >>