On Thursday, October 5th, Alonzo King Lines Ballet will perform at 8pm in the LPAC Pearson-Hall Theater. The event is free and open to the public.
A dancer has one, overarching goal when he or she steps onto the stage: to make it all look easy. No one wants to go see a ballet or contemporary performance to watch the dancers grimace and express to the audience the difficulty of what they are doing or the amount of pain they are in. The best dancers can make the hardest steps look easy, but it is their hard work and training that makes the choreography look this way. They have to battle the choreography and challenge themselves to give off a certain image.
Alonzo King works differently. The founder and artistic director of Alonzo King Lines ballet, he creates works that adhere to a specific stylistic goal: fluidity. He makes his dancers move in ways that accept and romanticize the human form, rather than breaking it into rigid techniques, as classical ballet does. His dancers barely look solid as they dance, and one is not constantly reminded of how uncomfortable the movements are or how difficult it is for the dancers. This is not to say that his pieces are easy to dance. They are incredibly difficult and require nearly perfect technique. But they are breathtaking because they look so fluid and unrestrained.
His company will be performing Biophony and The Propelled Heart. Biophony is a collaboration between Alonzo King, natural soundscape artist Bernie Krause, and composer Richard Blackford. For years, Krause made recordings of the natural world, from the sounds of killer whales to the gentle hum of the earth itself. The dancers take on animal form to remind us of the beauty that comes with a connection to the natural world.
The Propelled Heart is a celebration of the human voice. The performances is oriented around the vocalist Lisa Fischer, who has shared the stage with Mick Jagger, Beyoncé, Sting, Aretha Franklin, and more. Her voice is astoundingly powerful, and King wished to pay tribute to this. He explores the “kinetics” of the human voice, and his dancers make visual Ms. Fischer’s soaring music.
Gabriel Hearn-Desautels ’20