Stir Q&A: San Francisco choreographer Alonzo King on fairy tales, intelligence, and intuition
The founder and artistic director of Alonzo King LINES Ballet brings his contemporary company to Vancouver International Dance Festival
Alonzo King LINES Ballet: Robb Beresford and the company. Photo by Manny Crisostomo
Vancouver International Dance Festival presents Alonzo King LINES Ballet October 29 and 30 at 8 pm at the Vancouver Playhouse.
ALONZO KING IS a thinking person’s choreographer. Calling his works “thought structures”, the founder and artistic director of Alonzo King LINES Ballet is also a writer and lecturer on humanity and art. His mother, who trained as a dancer, introduced him to modern ballet, while is civil-rights-activist father opened him up to meditation.
Having toured the globe, King has been named one of the United States’ “Irreplaceable Dance Treasures” by the Dance Heritage Coalition, while acclaimed choreographer William Forsythe called him “one of the few true ballet masters of our times”.
At the Vancouver International Dance Festival, King’s San Francisco-based company will perform two pieces. Set to a piano score by Jason Moran, The Personal Element is a poetic work for eight dancers. Azoth takes its title from the name given to Mercury by ancient alchemists and is a dialogue between music (by Moran and Charles Lloyd) and movement.
Stir connected with King to hear more prior to LINES’ local visit.
You’re an intelligent choreographer and a philosopher of sorts. Who are some of the thinkers, writers, and leaders who inspire you?
Most of us human beings are makers and doers. Solutions and inspiration in making and doing come from knowledge. When the mind ceases to be disturbed by restlessness, peace and wisdom naturally rise to the surface. I am constantly inspired by the many books and writings of Paramahansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi.
Intelligence permeates everything in the universe. In our short lives we don’t have time to read all the books that exist. It’s impossible. Intuition is the great intelligence. It exists. Great books, teachers, and experiences can awaken what is partially asleep, but intuition born of stillness can open the door to all knowing. This entire universe is the result of inconceivable thought. We can’t understand terms like eternity or infinity intellectually; they are too vast, but those terms can be intuitively experienced and perceived. All creation is imbued with intelligence. Trauma can block intelligence, as well as awaken it. Intelligence can be used for evil or good. Sometimes it’s like a searchlight that appears and disappears. But intuition is perennial soul knowledge.
In my childhood I was fascinated and deeply absorbed in fairy tales. Fairy tales are gigantic metaphysical truths embodied in stories. True fairy tales are speaking of spiritual profundities. Subliminally we internally resonate with them, even when we don’t fully understand their symbology. They serve as a tuning fork for truth.
Swan Lake is the story of all humanity in our struggle for liberation and joy. Prince Siegfried represents all beings, everybody, humanitas. The “hunt” is the quest for what is beyond the material world. Spirit is symbolized by the swan or white bird. Materialism is represented by the status quo or worldly kingdom. The choice is to remain hypnotized by illusion or break through into spiritual reality. Sleeping Beauty is the same. Aurora represents each one of us beginning to awaken, the dawn”, i.e., light. Darkness disappears and we are kissed by the prince—nothing to do with male gender but a symbol of intuition, inner knowing. Using the magic sword or magic wand of willpower, which is a symbol of the awakened spine, the prince slices through the difficult and dark forest of ignorance. The closing sentence in many fairy tales “and they lived happily ever after in their Father’s kingdom” is plainly obvious, a metaphor for eternal bliss. This is everyone’s story. What we human beings all have in common is the desire to avoid pain and suffering and find a joy that never goes stale.
What is it about the human body and movement that allow you to express your ideas, thoughts, and emotions in ways more powerful than words?
The human body is an electromagnetic wave. It is not a solid mass of weight, solidified circumference and gravity as we think. The body is whirling with billions of brilliant cells, protons/electrons and non-stop waves of energy. It is an internal galaxy that is a miniature copy of the macrocosm in which we exist. Externally the body is tiny in form, but internally it matches the gargantuan endless cosmos in size and capacity.
Movement is the principal expression of life. We know that things are alive by their movement, whether it’s brain waves, breath, or physical action. We all have the same physical instrument in common—the body—and it’s interesting to watch people communicate with that instrument. All that is codified in ballet, or what is more precisely termed Western classical dance, is found in nature. Straight line and circle compose all that exists.
Everything is dancing: The bodies of fixed stars that have shimmered in place for eons through gravity’s magnetic pull; the human being striving to maintain poise against obstacles, radiating in joy or collapsing in suffering. Great lives are great dances. You witness in them the balance of law and spirit, logic and feeling, irony and obstacle, as well as the equilibrium of truth and the great alchemy of unstoppable will.
Alonzo King. Photo via Alonzo Kings LINES Ballet.
The pandemic was extraordinarily difficult for performing artists. What did you miss most during that time and how did you cope?
We are moving into a higher age, and the gross, heavy, and harmful way we have been behaving can’t come along with us anymore. It has to be discarded. It’s too harmful and heavy. The pandemic forced us to contemplate life’s ephemerality, and our participation as either “pillar or parasite”. It also afforded many of us a period of deep introspection on the direction of our lives and what kind of self-reform is required to become what we want to be.
LINES remained busy. We put all of our classes and workshops online, opening them to participants around the world. The performance company began making films directed by LINES executive and creative director, Robert Rosenwasser, which were highly praised across the globe. We also began working with filmmakers to produce content, and that will continue to be a part of our platform.
We have been doing more and more live performances under strict COVID protocols for the last six months. Vancouver is one of our favorite places to perform, and we are looking forward to being back there, in that beautiful environment with its friendly occupants and wonderful art makers.
Without giving too much away, what themes or concepts will the dancers explore in the VIDF program?
Science is a part of everything. There is no escaping that reality. Objective impersonal analysis needs to be balanced by love. We are presently out of balance. We have leaped in technical prowess and scientific understanding, and yet the expansive growth spurt of the heart seems to be delayed and hasn’t yet matched that of technology. We need to realign the imbalance. The Personal Element is addressing the intelligence of the heart that cannot be omitted or ignored.
The truly successful life is a helix that requires both brain and heart. If we think that we are living our own little separate existence that has no effect on others and the larger world, we are mistaken.
War, religious sectarianism, racism, and the boomerang evils of materialism cannot be separated from the making and doing that human beings participate in. The thought structures and belief systems that allow and perpetuate these destructive plagues are shockingly present to some degree in all of us.
Art is one of the doorways through which vision can be expanded. The artist isn’t concerned with appearance as much as what is behind the appearance—the essence of all things.
For more information, see VIDF.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
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