Dance review: Alonzo King re-imagines ballet for a new century

Dance Review |

To watch the extra-long limbs of an Alonzo King LINES Ballet dancer soar to fill the extra-wide Meany Hall stage is one of the UW World Dance series' most rewarding events. The huge stage requires expansiveness and propelled force and no one delivers better on these counts than LINES.

Yet for this weekend's performance of "Long River, High Sky," a full-evening ballet juxtaposing LINES' nine Western-ballet thoroughbreds with seven devoted kung fu masters from the Shaolin Temple, audiences might have been better served by seeing the work in an opera house like McCaw Hall. The framed container would heighten the achievement here, both visually and contextually. For this is a work in which King is shaking up the meaning and possibilities of the traditional two-act ballet form and then setting it to rest in a new 21st century position.

Organic rhythms meet theatrical artifice without apology in this exploration of two fearless disciplines. Individual movement phrasing for both groups has breath and delicacy, yet the full ballet meal is also served: opulent lighting and music cues, ensemble work interjected with visits from tiered soloists, luxuriant scrim projections, airborne pyrotechnics, even gentle passing glances at a sickened swan and a prodigal son. Who else would have thought to use monks to revive an antiquated Western art form and show us the devotion that drives dance?

The piece opens with one male dancer and one monk in a downstage spot, the cliché of stage intimacy, yet King sets up this unusual pairing as a match between competent equals; neither fawns for the other. The King dancer moves in otherworldly lunges and extensions, topped with flickering and winged arms. In contrast, the monk's movements present coiled circles of motion punctuated by darting, striking limbs.

For two hours, this simple interplay of style — in group work, solos, duets, and one exquisite trio — demonstrates all manners of learning, devotion, power and fearless animal focus.

Traditional ballets are quick to deliver visual harmony and union, but King doesn't rush to meld his groups. At times, he plays up the mismatch, as with the shiny Tinkerbell-y ballet skirts for his Amazon-strength women, which render their initial pairings with the monks as strangely mesmerizing and goofy as those YouTube videos of kittens curling up with hippos. To later watch individuals experience whiffs of unforced contact — as when a trio of dancers extends their arms skyward, and one pair of hands joins together in a clasp — is joyous and effortless.

The electronic-traditional score (accidentally uncredited in the program) is by Miguel Frasconi and Melody of China, a San Francisco-based Chinese musical ensemble led by Hong Wang. It completes the picture here, of a work where neither tradition is denied nor diluted.