A Few Reasons to Love Alonzo King Lines Ballet

Adji Cissoko in Four Heart Testaments. Photo: Danica Paulos.

Random notes from the Alonzo King Lines Ballet's August 7, 2022 Jacob's Pillow performance of Four Heart Testaments and Azoth.

No traditional pirouette preparations

Alonzo King offers the kinetic thrill of turns and spins without the formal preparation stances of traditional ballet—typically, you'd stop, assume a fourth position, wind up your torso and arms, and push off while rotating. King’s dancers walk or slide and simply step or chassée into a turn using the energy already in motion, almost like in ice skating. (Some of the dancers are so skilled at this, they do multiple spins with little effort, as if on ice!) The flow is maintained and the turn becomes an embellishment of movement, whereas in classical ballet, the prep/turn break fluency and become a separate event, often to display technical prowess.

Soft slippers for all

For the Pillow program, the women wore soft slippers, not pointe shoes. The contact patch of a woman’s foot in a toe shoe is miniscule and very hard, thus slippery, even with rosin. The degree of difficulty while doing the simplest moves—walking, running, shifting direction—in pointe shoes is vastly overlooked. In soft shoes, a dancer is much more stable.

James Gowan in Four Heart Testaments. Photo: Danica Paulos.

The lines (no pun intended) achieved in pointe shoes are the main desired effect, besides literally spinning like a top in pirouettes. But Lines dancers are so elongated by selection and training that when they relevé and “pull up” with their core muscles, they nearly appear to be on point. Add to that their extreme flexibility, such as split arabesques, and highly-arched feet, and you have a viable alternative to the whole pointe shoe trap. It’s also much more gender balanced, negating much of the need (or tendency) for male/female partnering (and vice versa), even if it's still an option.

Embrace artful technology, but with simplicity

Jim Campbell’s lighting/set pieces in Azoth were stunning, if simple—three square matrices of light bulbs that ranged from various colors to rippling imagery, augmented by Jim French’s lighting that often immersed the dancers to the point where their shadows were nearly invisible. Campbell’s pieces not only lit, they sculpted space by tilting, raising, and lowering. Later on, small, handheld paddle versions bearing light and animation became the sole illumination for one section.

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While these are just a few notes on Lines, they point to moving ballet into the future with a more egalitarian, modern model, while retaining much of what people love.