"...earthy, dark and sensuous style"

August 14, 2002 performance reviewed by Connell McGrath

As Jacob’s Pillow’s 70th season winds to a close, Alonzo King brings his LINES Ballet to Becket. Mr. King is single-handedly bringing ballet to contemporary dance.

Over time, ballet evolved into a reaction to gravity, and floating on air was the epitome of balletic form and feminine grace. The illusion of levitation when a ballerina goes en pointe seems like magic and has been used to great effect in the world of traditional ballet. King’s dancers use ballet’s range of motion and gesture, the balance and extension of the classical form, but they also claim the idiosyncratic and sometimes disturbing aspects of human character. Classical ballet is otherworldly, but LINES is firmly set on the ground, in the sensual world.

The mission in Mr. King’s choreography may be to release ballet from its traditional bounds, and a great deal of the energy of these dances is generated from the contrast and contradiction (if only in expectation) between the traditional and the new.

The Hearts Natural Inclination (2001) begins with a man (former Kirov Ballet dancer Artur Sultanov) hopping sideways, awkwardly, with his head wrapped in his arms, as if protecting himself. A woman joins him and tries to unwrap him, eventually giving up. Then another woman (Chiharu Shibata) comes on and succeeds in “opening him up”. The most striking section of the following pas de deux occurs when Ms. Shibata wraps herself horizontally around Mr. Sultanov and crawls around his torso as he walks. In the end, they roll off the stage in a ball. Together, they create a boundary of inner space. The excellent music for The Hearts Natural Inclination is by Leslie Stuck, lighting by Axel Morgenthaler, costumes by Robert Rosenwasser. The title of the piece informs its theme of the challenges of intimacy in love relationships.

Tarab (1998) is the piece that most clearly embodies this company’s earthy, dark and sensuous style, and was the most successful piece of the evening. The music by Hamza El Din is exotic and dreamy, and combined with the smoke drifting about creates an Arabian Nights atmosphere. Mr. Rosenwasser created great costumes for Tarab. The company’s hallmark sinuous twisting motion, particularly of the arms, looks absolutely right in this setting. The stage undulates with dancers released to a world of pleasure in movement, and the dancers clearly love what they are asked to perform in Tarab. This piece also contains expressive contrasts—a fist, hands held over the eyes, a swooping toe angled back defining the arc of a leg motion, mincing steps alternating with graceful glides.

The final and most ambitious piece of the evening was Koto (2002), with live music composed and performed by Miya Masaoka on the koto, a traditional Japanese instrument. Masaoka’s work was mesmerizing, as was her placement on the stage. She sat in half-light above and behind the dancers, screened by a dark gauze curtain so that she appeared ghostly. The music left a strong impression after the piece ended. In Koto, the costumes (by Rosenwasser and Colleen Quen) were more varied and striking—skirt edgings formed with sculptural wire in frothy shapes, pants shaped with wire in circles down the legs, very short hoop skirts, skirts for the men made with wide irregular strips of gossamer fabric.

Koto is a full-company piece with many parts, most impressive of which was Chi and the Men, a piece danced by Chiharu Shibata and five male dancers. The men and Ms. Shibata alternate dancing, and some of the best choreography is found here.

Many sections of this last piece end in motion, including the finale. Koto eschews final tableaux, preferring the “message” of continuous movement as the lights dim. Unlike the ending of a fairy tale, where all the ends are neatly tied up, these dances continue as the fading light imposes its own ending. This device, among many others, distinguishes Alonzo King’s style, and adds powerful spiritual and emotional aspects to the work of LINES.