Alonzo King LINES Ballet Comes to New Orleans

The sleek, San Francisco-based LINES Ballet, led by brilliant dancemaker Alonzo King, brings its exquisitely refined contemporary ballet to the intimate NOCCA stage. The incomparable choreographer and celebrated company return to New Orleans on January 21 and 22 in three performances at NOCCA's Freda Lupin MemoriAl Hall. Co-presented by the New Orleans Ballet Association and The NOCCA Institute, the event marks the dynamic company's first return to New Orleans since 1994.

Famous for blending music and dance styles from many cultures, King creates gorgeous ballets that are dazzling and sophisticated. His intrepid company of 11 dancers, praised by The New Yorker as "hyperkinetic and exceptional," brings a program featuring two of King's most recent collaborations, Scheherazade and Refraction.

Scheherazade is a masterfully reimagined tale of the Arabian Nights that was originally premiered at the opening of the Monaco Dance Forum Festival in December 2009. Featuring a score by King's frequent collaborator and renowned tabla master Zakir Hussain, the new music reinterprets the original score by Rimsky-Korsakov, incorporating traditional Persian as well as Western instruments. "The dancing thrills, but you emerge from the ballet impressed with dramatic contrasts and musicality of the piece. King has created nothing finer in years." (SF Gate)

The original ballet adaptation of Scheherazade premiered in 1910 by the Ballets Russes at the Opéra Garnier in Paris, and featured choreography by Michel Fokine to Rimsky-Korsakov's existing musical score. Commissioned by Jean-Christophe Maillot of Les Ballets de Monte Carlo and the Monaco Dance Forum to inaugurate the Centenary of the Ballets Russes
de Monte Carlo, Alonzo King LINES Ballet's Scheherazade honors Diaghilev's spirit of cutting-edge artistic collaboration, immersing audiences in a luminescent and richly textured world. "Scheherazade...was extremely beautiful, a visual feast, an evening of dreams..." (Monaco-Matin)
On the process of creating Scheherazade, choreographer King wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Very little is known, or even spoken of, regarding Scheherazade herself. My main interest was Scheherazade as woman and symbol. Research informed me about the long-held abuse and oppression that occurs to this day of women and girls across the globe. It was mind-boggling."
The second work on the program, Refraction (2009), was created with New York-based jazz pianist Jason Moran. Recently named "the most provocative thinker in current jazz" by Rolling Stone magazine, Moran is known for combining an astute technical virtuosity with an open-ended approach to jazz. In Refraction, which markEd Moran's first composition for dance, King's signature style of blending movement with music is apparent, and the Voice of Dance says "an astonishingly flexible and fearless team of dancers, arresting choices of music, an intense, brooding atmosphere, and a movement style that begins with a ballet base, subjects the body to all manner of non-balletic flourishes, yet ultimately remains faithful to a classical ideal."

The Friday and Saturday evening performances are SOLD OUT. Limited tickets are available for the Saturday matinee performance. The Friday and Saturday evening performances begin at 8pm; the Saturday matinee performance begins at 2pm. For tickets or information, call the New Orleans Ballet Association Box Office at (504) 522-0996.

In addition to performances at NOCCA, LINES Ballet is also presenting a student performance for local schools at 1:30pm on Friday. The student performance is open to local schools as a field trip opportunity. The company will conduct a master class on Thursday, January 20 for NOCCA students and on Saturday, January 22 for the NORD/NOBA Center For Dance. For more information about master classes or field trip opportunities call (504) 522-0996 x 207 or email afloyd@nobadance.com.

Scheherazade is funded in part by the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Community Connections Fund of the MetLife Foundation.

American Airlines is the official airline of the New Orleans Ballet Association and the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel is the official hotel.

Alonzo King, Artistic Director
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 that govern the shapes and movement directions of everything that exists.
King has worked in the repertories of the Swedish Royal Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Alvin Ailey, Hong Kong Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, and Washington Ballet. He has worked extensively in opera, television, and film, and has choreographed works for prima ballerina Natalia Makarova and film star Patrick Swayze. Known for collaborations, his seminal works include People of the Forest (2001), choreographed with Baka artists from the Central African Republic, and Long River High Sky (2007), choreographed with China's Shaolin Monks. He has collaborated with actor Danny Glover, legendary jazz saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, Hamza al Din, Pawel Szymanski and tabla master Zakir Hussain. In December of 2009, King's brand new interpretation of Scheherazade opened the Monaco Dance Forum Festival as part of a multi-year project.

Renowned for his skill as a teacher, King has been guest ballet master for dance companies around the globe. In 2005, King was named a Master of Choreography by the Kennedy Center. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom presented the 2nd Annual Mayor's Art Award to King in October 2008, calling him a "San Francisco treasure, embodying the best of San Francisco, the creative excellence and diverse culture of this city." In June 2008, King was honored with the Jacob's Pillow Creativity Award, in recognition of his contribution to "moving ballet in a very 21st-century direction." The Creativity Award is the third major national award bestowed upon him in three years, following the 2006 US Artists Fellowship and the 2005 Bessie Award for Choreographer/Creator. He is also the recipient of the NEA Choreographer's Fellowship, Irvine Fellowship in Dance, National Dance Project, and the National Dance Residency Program, as well as an Isadora Duncan Award. King has received the Hero Award from Union Bank, The Los Angeles Lehman Award, and the Excellence Award from KGO, and was also chosen as a recipient of the San Francisco Foundation's 2007 Community Leadership Award.

A former commissioner for the city and county of San Francisco, as well as a writer and lecturer on the art of dance, King's contributions appear in the books Master of Movement: Portraits of American Choreographers and in Dance Masters: Interviews with Legends of Dance. He was awarded the Green Honors Chair Professorship from Texas Christian University and holds honorary doctorates from Dominican University of California and California University of the Arts.

LINES Ballet Company History
Alonzo King LINES Ballet of San Francisco is a celebrated contemporary ballet company that has been guided since 1982 by its uniquely global artistic vision. Collaborating with noted composers, musicians, and visual artists, Alonzo King creates works that draw on a diverse set of deeply rooted cultural traditions and imbue classical ballet with new expressive potential. King's visionary choreography is renowned for its ability to connect audiences to a profound sense of shared humanity - of vulnerability and tenderness, but also of furious abandon and exhilarating freedom.
Six company dancers have received the coveted Princess Grace Award, including Laurel Keen (2006), Meredith Webster (2007), and Corey Scott-Gilbert (2009).
LINES Ballet has collaborated with Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, and Japanese classical composer Somei Satoh, among others. One of the company's great successes was collaborating with sixteen musicians and dancers from the Lobaye Forest of Central African Republic - the BaAka - on the People of the Forest project. LINES Ballet has also received accolades for its collaborative project with the Shaolin monks, an unprecedented synthesis of Eastern and Western classical forms that intertwines martial arts and ballet.
As San Francisco audiences flock to LINES Ballet's annual spring and fall home sold-out seasons, the company is also enjoying tremendous success abroad at venues such as the Venice Biennale and the Maison de la Dance in Lyon. The company has been featured at several prestigious festivals, including Montpelier Danse, the Wolfsburg Festival, and the Holland Dance Festival. The extraordinary quality of the dancers continues to receive glowing reviews in the US and abroad.
The accomplishments of the performing company are matched by the quality and reach of its arts education programs. LINES Ballet continues its commitment to dance education and community involvement through the LINES Dance Center, established in 1989, now one of the largest dance facilities on the West Coast offering over 80 open classes to adults and teenagers. In 2001, the LINES Ballet School was established to develop the potential of young dancers through the year-round and summer programs. LINES Ballet embarked on a partnership with the Dominican University of California in fall 2006, inaugurating the LINES Ballet/Dominican Bachelor of Fine Arts program in dance. This is the only joint BFA program in the country to be led by an active, world-renowned master choreographer.

The New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) is a tuition-free arts conservatory for high school students and an agency of the State of Louisiana. The mission of The NOCCA Institute, a non-profit organization, is to provide support and advocacy for NOCCA. The Institute provides access to excellence in the arts for students, faculty, and the community-at-large. For information about auditions, events, and activities, please visit www.NOCCAInstitute.com.

New Orleans Ballet Association is celebrating 41 years of bringing dance to life and is the Central Gulf region's premiere presenting and service organization dedicated solely to the art of dance. NOBA's dynamic Main Stage season annually features a diverse array of world-class companies and artists. Each year NOBA provides concerts, classes, workshops and lectures to more than 25,000 area dance enthusiasts of all ages. In addition, NOBA's nationally recognized award-winning education programs provide the youth of our community access to quality arts programs with 3,000 free dance classes and workshops annually at eleven sites throughout the Greater New Orleans area.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which believes that a great nation deserves great art; a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council as administered by the Arts Council of New Orleans (ACNO); a Community Arts Grant made possible through the City of New Orleans as administered by ACNO; a grant from the Louisiana State Arts Council through the Louisiana Division of the Arts and the NEA.

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