Alonzo King, the celebrated contemporary ballet company, is guided by its uniquely global artistic vision. Drawing on a diverse set of deeply rooted cultural traditions, the company's works imbue classical ballet with new expressive potential. Alonzo King's visionary 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. The program includes Concerto for Two Violiins, Writing Ground, and Rasa, set to an original score created and performed live by tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain. Scroll down for some photos of the ballet!
Rasa is a deeply evocative and shimmering piece set to an original score created and performed live by tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain. 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.
Concerto for Two Violins surrenders to the rhythms of Bach, utilizing music first immortalized by Balanchine last century. From its opening, the 16-minute ballet unfurls with energetic passages of uniform formations and exploding solos, the exacting movements defining King's brand of "muscular classicalism." Concerto for Two Violins delivers emotionality equal to the rich, textured voice of the accompanying strings.
Commissioned in 2010 by Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, King's masterful Writing Ground draws inspiration from poems by award-winning author Colum McCann. An emotionally searing and lyrical work set to a collection of sacred early music from the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Tibetan Buddhist traditions, Writing Ground challenges the Company to explore new physical territory.
Alonzo King LINES Ballet is a celebrated contemporary ballet company that has been guided since 1982 by the unique artistic vision of Alonzo King. Collaborating with noted composers, musicians, and visual artists from around the world, Alonzo King creates works that draw on a diverse set of deeply rooted cultural traditions, imbuing classical ballet with new expressive potential. Alonzo King understands ballet as a science - founded on universal, geometric principles of energy and evolution - and continues to develop a new language of movement from its classical forms and techniques. Alonzo King's visionary choreography, brought to life by the extraordinary LINES Ballet dancers, is renowned for connecting audiences to a profound sense of shared humanity.
While the Company's spring and fall home seasons bring new works of illuminating beauty to Bay Area audiences, LINES Ballet's global tours allow us to share our vision of transformative, revelatory dance worldwide. LINES Ballet has been featured at venues such as the Venice Biennale, Monaco Dance Forum, Maison de la Dance, the Edinburgh Festival, Montpellier Danse, the Wolfsburg Festival, and the Holland Dance Festival. This past spring, the first full-length film of the Company's performances was released in Europe, inaugurating Alonzo King LINES Ballet's 30th Anniversary season.
Alonzo King has been called a visionary choreographer, who is altering the way we look at ballet. King calls his works 'thought structures' created by the manipulation of energies that exist in matter through laws, which govern the shapes and movement directions of everything that exists.
King has works in the repertories of the Swedish Royal Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, Ballet Bejart, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, Joffrey Ballet, Alvin Ailey, Hong Kong Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. He has worked extensively in opera, television, and film. Known for collaborations, seminal works include People of the Forest (2001), choreographed with Baka artists from Central African Republic and Long River High Sky (2007), with China's Shaolin Monks. He has collaborated with actor Danny Glover, legendary jazz saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, Hamza al Din, Pawel Szymanski, Jason Moran, and tabla master Zakir Hussain. Renowned for his skill as a teacher, Mr. King has been guest ballet master for dance companies around the globe. In 2012 King was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Corps de Ballet International Teacher Conference.
King is the director of the international touring Company, Alonzo King LINES Ballet housed in San Francisco with the Alonzo King LINES Ballet BFA at Dominican University of California, Training Program, Summer Program, and Dance Center.