Brett Conway and Meredith Webster of Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet. Photo by Marty Sohl.
If choreographer Alonzo King’s titles are growing more opaque and indigestible as the years flow on (the plainly described String Quartet dates from 1995), at least his dances seem to become more humane, more propelled by recognizable emotional crises and less, as in engagements past, by the obsessive exploration of his company’s astonishing technical resources. The Radius of Convergence, given its world premiere during the sold-out opening of Lines Ballet’s 26th home season Friday (October 17) at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Novellus Theater, is not King’s most complex or florid work.
Yet, in this seven-part suite for nine dancers, the choreographer toils through a skewed classical lexicon to simulate a world that veers off its axis in violent, unstoppable directions. And you dare not look away as King stretches the ballet vocabulary to reflect a society hovering on the precipice. In one section, Corey Scott-Gilbert repeatedly pushes off Laurel Keen, as if she were a dock and he a championship swimmer doing laps.
Later, four men seem to watch Brett Conway squirming in captivity and then do something unpleasant to him, rolling him in their arms. David Harvey, new to the company, constantly upsets Meredith Webster’s equilibrium, and then walks her around the stage, as if she were a pet poodle. Keen is repeatedly and rudely embraced by the waist and spun around. Certain details puzzle. I can’t begin to imagine what King intends by having convulsions ritually seize the bodies of the men in one section, and I suspect the choreographer doesn’t know either. Nor can I conceive of any interpretation of the work which might account for the episode in which Caroline Rocher, who is really much too classy for this stuff, appears to scratch her rear end.
Keelan Whitmore and Corey Scott-Gilbert of Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet. Photo by Marty Sohl.
Somehow, this work looks unfinished. In the Epilogue, there’s a bit of coupling on the floor, some mild head-butting and the ever-elastic Scott-Gilbert flailing on the other side of the stage. It feels provisional, as if the allotted rehearsal time ran out. Some of this material comes close to self-parody (or, at least, gallows humor), but not a titter could be heard from this audience. If the world is really this terrible, it would be nice if King could show us an alternate path before we drink the Kool-Aid.
Radius is the latest collaboration between King and the legendary jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, who, as usual, plays like a wizened angel. This time, however, he improvises solo and simultaneously with pre-recorded scores by Edgar Meyers and commissioned works by Miguel Frasconi, Leo Hurley and Leslie Stuck. Some of the sounds emit a pleasing, gamelan-like sonority, but many of them don’t add up to much more than sonic wallpaper and they did not seem an inspiring factor in the making of the ballet. Robert Rosenwasser’s costuming is minimal and Axel Morgenthaler’s lighting constantly varies in hue and intensity. Ashley Jackson, Keelan Whitmore and Ricardo Zayas completed the cast.
Earlier, King re-introduced his frequent guest artist, Muriel Maffre, retired San Francisco Ballet principal dancer and recent honoree as a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, awarded by the Ministry of Culture of her native France. Maffre remains a unique and complex performer, but even she could not confer much distinction on The Steady Articulation of Perseverance, a duet prepared last summer for the Venice Biennale and introduced here during Lines’ engagement at the Stern Grove Festival.
This time, Sanders improvises to forgettable music by Wieslaw Pogorzelski and Jim McKee. Yet, he didn’t seem to inflame this exchange between Maffre and Scott-Gilbert, which begins with the dancers confronting each other in silhouette and proceeds to a series of extreme extensions, startling tendus, treacherous balances and 180-degree arabesques. Maffre remains an amazing technician; watching her squat walk across the stage while on pointe induces a sharp intake of breath. Scott-Gilbert’s speed and infinitely flexible joints are not to be regarded lightly. Yet, this duet offers nothing we haven’t seen from King earlier. He seems to exploit Maffre’s physical prowess without tapping into her intelligence, emotional range or remarkable serenity.
The revival of String Quartet was splendidly dispatched. Joining the company was Kaylin Ecklin of the Lines Ballet Training Program and nine members of the Lines Ballet/Dominican University Training BFA Program. It was interesting to watch the piece again (to a recording of a Pawel Szymanski score) with a cast completely different from the original team. To be honest, those treacherous balances, extended arms and realignment of body weight are delivered with considerably greater ease than they were back in 1995. Rocher’s ironic attack and Zayas’ ardor illuminated one pas de deux and the hinged limbs in the succeeding Keen-Whitmore exchange suggest that King was having an Agon moment. Not, you understand, that there’s anything wrong with that.
Lines Ballet’s home season continues at YBCA, San Francisco, Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. www.yerbabuenaarts.org 415.978.2787.
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