Repertoire
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Resin
A dancer presses his body into the outline of a cone of light; the halo lifts upwards, a shofar sounds its lament, and Resin begins. As the piece moves from intimate duets to the flashing, barely visible footwork of a quartet of dancers, Alonzo King explores the possibilities of the vast and diverse field of Sephardic music. In this “Diaspora within the Diaspora,” as curator and ethnomusicologist Francesco Spagnolo writes, “the music of the Sephardic Jews has come into contact with music from Europe, including Italy and the Balkans, and especially with the Arabic and Turkish musical worlds.” Rare archival field recordings are interwoven with Judeo-Spanish songs, and the stage is transformed into a shimmering and timeless landscape, as tiny hardened tears cascade downwards in streams of light.
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Triangle of the Squinches
Triangle of the Squinches, is set to a commissioned score by legendary musician Mickey Hart and features an innovative kinetic set by cutting-edge architect Christopher Haas. In this piece, Alonzo King explores the inner and outer space of the body: how do we strive to touch something infinite with our material forms? What is the resonance between the bodies we inhabit and the forms we create?
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Wheel in the Middle of the Field
Set to some of the most ethereally beautiful vocal music ever created by Handel, Brahms, Fauré, Strauss, Schubert, John Sheppard, and Reynaldo Hahn, Wheel in the Middle of the Field is a collaboration between LINES Ballet and a talented group of young opera singers from the San Francisco Opera’s Adler Fellows program. An intimate resonance between song and movement unfolds as the breathtaking voices of the four singers—soprano, mezzo-soprano, counter-tenor, and baritone—rise in unison with the unique grace of the LINES Ballet dancers. In the words of the San Francisco Chronicle, Wheel transcends Alonzo King’s “mesmerizing technique to emerge among his most personal utterances.”
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Scheherazade
Alonzo King’s Scheherazade is a re-envisioning of the ancient collection of Persian, Sanskrit, and Arabic stories of 1,001 Nights. The exquisite dancers of LINES Ballet present a vision of the transformative potential these stories possess: the way that we are offered a chance to listen to a voice that can change our lives, the power of art to illuminate all the chambers of our hearts. The new score by tabla master Zakir Hussain re-interprets the original music by Rimsky-Korsakov, incorporating traditional Persian as well as Western instruments. Commissioned by the Monaco Dance Forum to inaugurate the Centenary of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, Alonzo King LINES Ballet’s Scheherazade honors Diaghilev’s spirit of cutting-edge artistic collaboration, immersing audiences in a luminescent and richly textured world.
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Refraction
“I am always hoping my music will move its audience,” jazz composer Jason Moran said of this collaboration with Alonzo King LINES Ballet. Refraction marked the first time Moran had composed for dance, and he confided that his first experience watching Alonzo King and the LINES dancers in the studio was “a breakthrough—I wasn’t ready for what I witnessed.” Named “the most provocative thinker in current jazz” by Rolling Stone, Jason Moran is both steeped in the traditions of jazz and committed to pushing its boundaries. Refraction unites Moran and King as they open up new avenues for jazz and ballet as art forms—and create a vivid new dialogue between those forms. Voice of Dance described this piece as bringing together “an astonishingly flexible and fearless team of dancers, arresting choices of music, an intense, brooding atmosphere, and a movement style that begins with a ballet base, subjects the body to all manner of non-balletic flourishes, yet ultimately remains faithful to a classical ideal.”
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Dust and Light
“Like so many dances by the celebrated choreographer Alonzo King, Dust and Light resembles poetry in motion,” the Boston Globe proclaims. In a landscape that shifts like the clouds, dappling the stage with soft light and then bathing the dancers in silvery radiance, Alonzo King brings out the emotional intimacy of dance. The LINES Ballet dancers move in harmonious counterpoint to each other, setting off the rich variations of Arcangelo Corelli’s Baroque music against Francis Poulenc’s otherworldly sacred choral odes. Each body is replete with radiant potential, as if the stage were filled with a dozen moons—or perhaps with a dozen suns, since, as Alonzo King says, “a tendu isn't just the straightening of the leg but a ray of light radiating from the sun.” As the duets and trios of dancers culminate in an exuberant ensemble, the intimacy of the piece expands and opens outwards, immersing the audience in luminous grace.
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Rasa
Rasa, a deeply evocative and shimmering piece, set to an original score by tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, which was called “an intriguing wonder” by the New York Times. Zakir Hussain’s mastery of classical Indian percussion and unique vision of world music have brought him worldwide renown, including a Grammy nomination, and his collaborations with Alonzo King renew classical forms in an entirely innovative way. Tabla music began as dancing music, in Northern Indian courts in the early 1700s, and its hypnotic intensity and complex rhythms convey the strong feeling that they are meant to move the body. Rasa is thus both a continuation of a deep tradition--the interdependence of dance and tabla music as art forms--and an expression of the contemporary global vision of both artists.
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The Moroccan Project
This piece sets the vibrant drumming of Gnawa ceremonies as a backdrop for the haunting strains of oud (lute), violin, and devotional singing. The musicians draw on diverse forms of North African music, including Berber (Amazigh) songs from the Middle Atlas Mountains, Gnawa rituals originating in West Africa, and a form of popular song in Morocco called Chaabi. In this landscape of shifting rhythms and echoing voices, the extraordinary dancers of LINES Ballet move with flawless grace. The plaintive energy and melodic blending of the Moroccan songs is made tangible as Alonzo King’s choreography reflects the intricate rhythms of emotion and community.