Alonzo King Named 2019 Artist In Residence At Grace Cathedral

Alonzo King LINES Ballet and Grace Cathedral are pleased to announce that internationally celebrated choreographer Alonzo King will be the Artist in Residence at Grace Cathedral in 2019.

Grace Cathedral celebrates 2019 with the theme "Year of the Body." During the year, the cathedral community will consider a number of issues around the human body including: the imperative for all human bodies to be treated with respect, the wonder of our corporeal selves, and the spiritual elements of dance.

As Grace Cathedral's Artist in Residence, King will create a new work responding to the cathedral's theme that will be performed at Grace in February 2020. He will speak at the cathedral's conversation series, The Forum. Alonzo King LINES Ballet will hold workshops to engage the cathedral's many constituencies, including congregants, the yoga community, the Cathedral School for Boys, and The Community Preschool. Grace Cathedral's annual artist residency program was inaugurated in 2012 with actress, playwright and former trustee Anna Deavere Smith. Grace Cathedral invites artists to create work that illuminates the cathedral's annual theme and amplifies the cathedral's vision, mission and goals. Among other recent artists in residence are visual artist Sukey Bryan, contemporary artist Jim Campbell, and poet Sarah Kay.

"I am incredibly honored to be the 2019 Artist in Residence at Grace Cathedral," said King. "Grace is an organization known for its endless commitment to art and service; embracing the San Francisco community and the world. We have some wonderful projects planned."

The dean of the cathedral, the Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young, said, "We have an Artist in Residence program because we believe in the power of art to inspire people and we want to make art accessible to everyone." Young noted, "We have had poets, painters, performance artists and other people as our Artist in Residence. It is exciting this year to welcome our first choreographer as we explore the body as our annual theme."

For more information about Grace Cathedral's arts programs, please visit gracecathedral.org/air.

For more information about Alonzo King LINES Ballet, please visit linesballet.org.

Alonzo King has been called a visionary choreographer, who is altering the way we look at ballet. King calls his works "thought structures" created by the manipulation of energies that exist in matter through laws, which govern the shapes and movement directions of everything that exists. King has works in the repertories of the Royal Swedish Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, Ballet Béjart, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, Joffrey Ballet, Alvin Ailey, Hong Kong Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and many others. He has worked extensively in opera, television, and film.

Known for collaborations, seminal works include People of the Forest (2001), choreographed with Baka artists from Central Africa Republic and Long River High Sky (2007), with China's Shaolin Monks. He has collaborated with actor Danny Glover, legendary jazz saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, Hamza al Din, Pawel Szymanski, Jason Moran, Charles Lloyd, vocalist Lisa Fischer, architect Christopher Haas, and tabla master Zakir Hussain.

King is the Artistic Director of the international company Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and the Alonzo King LINES Ballet BFA at Dominican University of California, Training Program, Summer Program, and Dance Center, all based in San Francisco. Renowned for his skill as a teacher, King has been guest ballet master for dance companies around the globe, and in 2012, was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Corps de Ballet International Teacher Conference. King is a former commissioner for the city and county of San Francisco, and a writer and lecturer on the art of dance.

Alonzo King has been honored by the dance world's most prestigious institutions for his impact on the cultural fabric of the company's home in San Francisco, as well as nationally and internationally for over more than three decades. Named a Master of Choreography by the Kennedy Center in 2005, King is the recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation Artist Award, the NEA Choreographer's Fellowship, the Jacob's Pillow Creativity Award, the Irvine Fellowship in Dance, the US Artist Award in Dance, and the National Dance Project's Residency and Touring Awards. King holds a Green Honors Chair Professorship from Texas Christian University, and an Honorary Doctorate from Dominican University of California and California Institute for the Arts.

"Alonzo King is a rare bird in the current American dance landscape [...] Lines Ballet dances to full houses everywhere. It is easy to understand why: exceptional dancers, purity of movement, musicality of forms" -Philippe Noisette, Les Echos, March 2018

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