Laurel Keen of Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet with Artistic Director Alonzo King. Photo by RJ Muna.
One of the perks when attending the Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet home season is to catch the question and answer session the choreographer holds for the audience after one of the performances. Shortly after the dancing has concluded, the bows have been taken and the clapping subsided, King drags an unassuming chair directly to center stage, parks it in front of the curtain and settles into it as if he’s sitting down on his front porch to chat with his neighbors.
The questions asked by the audience in these post-performance talks run the gamut. There are first-time attendees who are simply curious (when I attended a talk after Long River, High Sky, his collaboration with the Shaolin monks, the couple next to me said they had attended the performance initially to see the martial arts of the monks and the dancing was a much-appreciated additional benefit). Other inquiries are more studious and informed, yet King manages to cultivate value from each question and provide a thought-provoking response. An eight-year old boy once asked a deceptively simple question, “How do you pick your dancers?”
When the San Francisco Ballet went on tour to celebrate their 75th anniversary last summer, they left open a yearly engagement in their hometown. The Stern Grove Festival a free, outdoor festival for residents of San Francisco asked Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet to step in. King devised a program for the festival that included not only the company’s repertory, but saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, former San Francisco Ballet principal Muriel Maffre and former LINES dancer Prince Credell in a world premiere pas de deux, plus the Hamideen Moroccan Ensemble. Prior to the company’s festival debut, King sat down at Stern Grove’s Trocadero Clubhouse to talk with festival attendees much like he does after his company’s performances and you can see excerpts in this podcast on the festival's Web site.
WATCH the podcast of choreographer Alonzo King’s Q&A at the Stern Grove Festival.
Want to submit a question for the post-performance talks? Ask a question
Alonzo King's LINES Ballet will hold their home season April 17-19 and 22-26 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. They will also perform May 5-10 at the Joyce Theater in New York City. King will hold a post-performance talk in San Francisco on Wednesday, April 22. Dancers Meredith Webster and Ricardo Zayas will hold another on April 23.
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