“Migration” and “Rasa”
Lines Ballet
Kraushaar Auditorium, Goucher College
Towson, Maryland
March 14, 2008
by George Jackson
copyright 2008 by George Jackson
The sensual impression is immediate and intense. Bodies impact your field of vision as substance and motion. The motion is not imposed by forces outside, but arises from deep within the flesh. Its emergence shows tension – a struggle, and triumph – that of form. Impulses arise continually and as they take shape, the context in which this happens impinges. You become aware that lighting isn’t just there but sculpts the dancers’ bodies and outlines the movement’s surge. Music provides push, of course, and also amplification or contrast, but keeps its separateness too. Although the pace is fast, it takes Alonzo King’s distinctive choreography time to run its course. Inevitably, beyond the feast the choreographer provides, questions begin to gather. King calls his Lines company ballet. Why? Is it any less so than Balanchine’s? Is it more so than Merce Cunningham’s or Mark Morris’s?
Clarity is the first reason I’d give for King being ballet – ballet in the classical vein - at least in part. Outlines are sharp and spacing is precise even when the movement isn’t a classroom step. He articulates the human body highly, both women’s and men’s, and does so anatomically at and with the skeletal joints. He chooses dancers who by training and endowment are predominantly pulled up, turned out, flexible and able to flow. He is not ashamed of using parts of the school lexicon when he wants to. He links and breaks movement organically. There hovers beyond King’s oddest images and most peculiar impulses a vision of a norm.
Not apparent at Goucher despite a considerable quotient of classicism was a touch Balanchine had. King did not show the ability to turn every conceivable movement or still moment into balletic dance. Would he even want such a gift? Isn’t there, rather, an affinity with the deliberate plain styling of Cunningham? If so, perhaps it comes from the way the choreography relates to music. Balanchine tried to converse with all facets of his musical text – rhythm, melody, texture, form, atmosphere – as well as with its context. Cunningham likes to choreograph independently of his music. King seems in between.
“Migration”, King’s work about evolution and return, has a score by two composers. First there is Miguel Frasconi’s music in which animal calls and sounds of nature figure. Here one can read biological development, species diversification and herd behavior into the movement. Then, after a brief closing of the curtains, the dancing to Leslie Stuck’s dynamic but less imagistic composition seems to be about the human predicament – the prone individual and ascent. Does the body lying on the floor allude to the fallen one in Balanchine’s “Serenade”? Does the rope ladder that suddenly appears refer to the evolutionary ladder, the ladder up the side of Noah’s Ark or a ladder to heaven?
The music for “Rasa”, by Zakir Hussain, is identifiably from India. The movement King made for the start of the piece could, however, be interpreted as animal stalking. Some of it might even be inserted into “Migration” Part 1 and not seem out of place. So much for interpreting the action literally! Only later in “Rasa” do passages have the patter pulse of India’s Khatak style of dancing – Khatak scrambled.
Choreography that isn't shaped by all the music’s aspects often hasn't a strong sense of form. One can loose the sense of path in “Migration” with its 6 parts and in “Rasa” with its 9 parts despite the demarked sections with their variations on dance themes or new motifs. That disturbs. It is akin to what happens at times in works by Cunningham. No goal is in sight. Movement and dancing just keep coming. The reassurance of a set destination, though, is something neither of these choreographers has been known to promise.
So, is Alonzo King’s Lines a ballet company or not? Not one toe shoe turned up on stage at Goucher, although King has had his women use pointes in other works – and use them idiomatically, not as stilts like Alvin Ailey had Judith Jamison do. Plenty of pirouettes can be found in King’s pieces, thrown in sometimes for fun like in French ballet. King is more classical technically and in his casting than Mark Morris who gives his dancers a balletic workout but one that’s loosely so. Musically, Morris is stricter and conveys more urgency of form. Does it matter? Consumers insist that labeling does. There are people who dote on ballet and want only to see it used fully and normally. Others, although dance lovers, loathe ballet technique and the stylization it produces. I wouldn’t send either type of customer to Lines. Alonzo King likes to work not within such limits but beyond.
[Robert Rosenwasser, associate artistic director of Lines, and ballet master Arturo Fernandez undoubtedly share in producing the Lines look. On the company’s roster are four women (Meredith Webster, Laurel Keen, Caroline Rocher and Ashley Jackson) plus five men (Bert Conway, David Harvey, Corey Scott-Gilbert, Keelan Whitmore and Ricardo Zayas). Lines' performances March 13 & 14 at Goucher College were part of the American College Dance Festival Association's Mid-Atlantic Conference.]