NORA SMITH & ROCCO PRIOLETTI
Staff Writers
After world-renowned Alonzo King LINES Ballet’s weeklong artistic engagement with Chautauqua’s School of Dance, they will join the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra in a night of collaboration at 7:30 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater.
Having performed “LEGACY” and “Ode to Alice Coltrane” during Monday’s program, LINES Ballet will now perform Maurice Ravel’s “Ma mère l’Oye” (Mother Goose) and pas de deux from “The Collective Agreement” in its second and final performance of the season.
In 2024, Alonzo King relayed in an interview with the San Francisco Symphony that he is trying to showcase the underlying archetypes and “underlying metaphysical truths” in children’s stories like Ravel’s “Mother Goose.” This motive still holds its merit today in this evening’s CSO-backed rendition.
“I’m not trying to recreate Mother Goose fairy tales,” King said, according to LINES Ballet’s program. “My intention is to unearth the deeper allegorical meanings beneath the fairy tales and illustrate those with dance.”
Laura Savia, vice president of performing and visual arts, said Chautauqua is blessed to have a symphony and music director who are both so skilled at performing live with ballet companies. With LINES performing twice during its visit to Chautauqua, Savia said the audience will get a lot out of seeing the dancers perform in two different settings — one with recorded music and one with live music. Savia said she works closely with Music Director Rossen Milanov throughout the planning process to coordinate a balanced program
that works well for both artistic parties.
Savia said “The Collective Agreement” is very contemporary in contrast to “Mother Goose,” which she described as a “lengthy, full meal of ballet.” In addition to the symphony accompanying the LINES dancers on their pieces, they will also be featured with an overture.
“It’s really a chance to see the symphony at the height of its powers and Alonzo King LINES with live music at the height of their powers,” Savia said.
King, an acclaimed dancer and choreographer, opened the San Francisco-based contemporary ballet company in 1982. He was named a Master of Choreography by the Kennedy Center in 2005.
Likewise, King has been recognized for his work as a dance teacher and educator; in 2012, King received the Lifetime Achievement Award by the CORPS de Ballet International Teacher Conference.
Since the company’s doors opened more than 40 years ago, LINES has continued to work toward its mission to “nurture artistry and the development of creative expression in dance, through collaboration, performance and education,” according to the company’s website.
Now, Alonzo King LINES Ballet will bring this dance-driven ideology to Chautauqua, backed by symphonic orchestration — a component that intrinsically pairs well with dance. In the interview with the San Francisco Symphony, King described the LINES’ dancers’ relationships to their bodies as possessing an inherent, instrument-like quality.
“They begin to see it as an instrument … They begin to work it as a violin, as a piano, as a harpsichord. It’s music. And what’s really playing that instrument is the mind and the heart,” King said in the interview. “And as you’re playing, whether it’s choreography or as a composer, you’re trying to find the essence of the communication, the ideas that are behind the music or the choreography. And you want them to inhabit you, so that they’re clear.”
