Reading Between the LINES

Alonzo King LINES Ballet is more than just a pretty face. Beyond the innovative choreography and gorgeous, super-human dancers, the company are renowned for their ability to connect with audiences on an emotional level, an attribute that many ballet companies unfortunately lack. King, the company’s visionary artistic director and sole choreographer, reveals that LINES’ success in this regard is the result of a strong underlying philosophy that guides their work: “Our company aim is to relentlessly exploit the endless potentialities of dance art and to reconnect the symbols of western classical dance with their metaphysical meanings.”
In King’s view, the movements of dance are symbols: a pairing of sign and meaning. However, ‘western classical dance’, including ballet, has isolated the sign from its meaning. This can be seen clearly in many present-day ballet companies, in which the majority of dancers strive for perfect technique, for an extra turn in their pirouette or an extra beat in their entrechat, but neglect to develop their expressiveness, and dance seemingly without emotion. Similarly, many audiences enjoy ballet because it looks pretty or is technically astounding, but don’t expect, or even desire, anything beyond that. King isn’t happy with this situation: “admiring symbols without understanding their meaning becomes idolatry.” He strives to move the focus beyond the steps—beyond the sign—and really express something. Of course, it’s not that each step is directly linked to a discrete referent, as is the case (at a basic level) with words and their meanings, and the steps don’t combine to spell out a single correct, linear ‘story’. King begins the choreographic process with an idea—“usually something that words are powerless to describe”—but rather than have the dancers actually act (or dance) it out, he lets its feeling guide his choreography, so that each movement distils and expresses that idea: each movement is a true symbol, reconnected with its meaning. In this respect, “the choreographic works are thought structures, and treatises on life and living”, usually dealing with some aspect of “ the vast quandary of the human condition. “

In fact, when watching King’s work it is easy to sense his concern with issues, situations and feelings that are integral to being human. His penchant for collaborating with artists from around the world emphasises the fact that these issues reach across countries and cultures, and help his ballets connect audiences to a strong sense of shared humanity. Two notable examples of such cross-cultural collaboration are “Long River, High Sky”, which featured Shaolin monks from China and highlighted the connections between ballet and martial arts, and “BaAka: The People of the Forest”, which juxtaposed LINES dancers with sixteen musicians and dancers from the BaAka Pygmies of the Central African rain forest. Rasa, one of the two pieces LINES will perform at the Festival, rivals these previous collaborations, with music written and performed live on stage by master tabla player Zakir Hussain, another pioneer in fusing western and eastern art forms. Tabla music has long been tied to dance, since it originated in Northern Indian courts in the early 18th century, but hadn’t been paired with ‘western classical dance’ until King and Hussain created Rasa three years ago. The two art forms complement each other amazingly well: both require utter concentration and precise technique, but once mastered, can result in joyful performances whose soaring quality belies their integral supporting structure.

King also enjoys a strong collaborative relationship with his dancers, who share equal responsibility for achieving the company aim of imbuing dance with meaning. “The dancer must be an impeccable story teller, or better said have a great understanding of the nature of things and how they operate. The dancing artist has to embody a living idea, so that it lives.” King means that his ideas, and the resulting movements, are not set in stone: the dancers are expected to infuse the choreography with their own interpretation, with whatever they are feeling on the day of the performance. One of the dancers, Corey Scott-Gilbert, explains in C-Magazine that “most people [i.e. choreographers] want dancers to do what they are told and just be pretty. [But King] wants us to have our own voice. He doesn’t want robots.”

Although King and the dancers place so much importance on the meaning behind dance, they certainly don’t neglect the movement itself. The company aim to “relentlessly exploit the endless potentialities of dance art” applies as much to their physicality as to what it can express. Although King’s works are rooted in a strong classical base, reflecting his rigorous training at School of American Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, they feature innovative, contemporary movements: twisting, spiralling, counter-balancing—a far cry from square, centred classical ballet. King attributes his ability to create such innovative movements to a comprehensive understanding of the laws of physics. “We see ballet… as a science of movement. All the universes are governed by laws...If these laws are studied...they show the cause and effect in all things. These laws are impossible to separate from anything, including dancing...We must completely understand the laws. We must transcend the laws.” King’s use of ‘we’ reflects the fact that he chooses dancers who, beyond having impeccable technique, are also curious individuals, eager to understand their world and its laws, and use them to open up new possibilities in their dancing. King and his dancers’ ever-burning desire to explore and improve has certainly paid off: no fewer than six LINES dancers have received the coveted Princess Grace Award for exceptional talent, and King has received, among numerous others awards and accolades, the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award for “moving ballet in a very 21st-century direction.”

The company’s efforts to push the boundaries of ballet—both it’s look and its expressive capability—consistently earns them critical praise: “The capacity for choreographic innovation is boundless”(Le Monde); “Interweaving it all was the soul, or spirit, that infuses all life, and it was the magic of King's direction that created this effect” (Seth Rogovy); “Some fans even speak of transcendence” (Dance Magazine). But don’t take the critics’ word for it. As King reminds, “nothing is truly known unless it is directly experienced.” So while LINES is here, go see this ground-breaking company, whose equal devotion to movement and meaning make their performances a truly unique, greatly satisfying experience.