Musicians and dancers will come together in a new and engaging way in the spring season of the Alonzo King LINES Ballet, which runs April 16-25 at the Novellus Theater at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The season features the premiere of a work that partners the ballet ensemble with several San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows.
Four singers and a pianist will join the 10 dancers onstage for a contemporary performance that is a true partnership of music and dance.
Photo by RJ Muna
Dancers performing to live music is nothing new, even if the use of singers accompanied only by a pianist differs from the traditional pairing of dance with orchestra. Including the musicians within the ballet, and encouraging them to move with the dancers onstage, is what takes it to a new level. The musicians become part of the overall visual performance, rather than mere vocal accompaniment.
This new work is set to a selection of art songs by Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Gabriel Fauré, Robert Schumann, John Sheppard, and Richard Strauss, as well as several arias by George Frideric Handel. The choreography is still a work in progress, and King, the company’s founder and artistic director, admits it will be so until the final performance. “The challenge is to integrate body, mind, and intentions, within the individuals themselves and between the two different disciplines,” he remarks.
For the singers, it’s something new, yet something that builds on their existing technique. “I encourage them to explore and expand into their physical bodies, using the entire body as a vocal cord,” says King. San Francisco Opera Center Director of Musical Studies Mark Morash adds, “Alonzo has asked the Adler Fellows to create a physical reflection of what they are already vocally expressing.”
Learn about LINES Ballet
The season features a second work, a recap of the hypnotic dance Rasa, created with tabla master Zakir Hussain in 2007. It also provides a chance to see and hear two unique San Francisco–based performance groups, especially some up-and-coming artists. The Adler Fellowships are performance-oriented residencies designed for classical music’s most promising new artists. This prestigious training program has nurtured more than 130 young artists with intensive individual training, coaching, professional seminars, and performance opportunities such as this one.
The Alonzo King LINES Ballet is returning home after critically acclaimed performances in Europe. These performances are only the latest in a long history of collaborations, including ones with jazz pianist Jason Moran, the Shaolin Monks, Bernice Johnson Reagon (founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock), actor Danny Glover, Japanese classical composer Somei Satoh, Polish composer Paweł Szymański, and Nubian oud master Hamza El Din. Needless to say, the company doesn’t shy away from trying something new and different, and this is a great opportunity to see its artists doing what they do best.
Morash, who has been attending rehearsals, describes the experience of melding music with movement as “both liberating and immensely fulfilling.” There’s no doubt that audiences will agree.