Alonzo King LINES Ballet Performs At SummerStage 2018

Alonzo King LINES Ballet, the San Francisco-based, internationally celebrated contemporary ballet company, performs at City Parks Foundation's SummerStage 2018, New York City's largest free outdoor performing arts festival. This year's SummerStage is presented by Capital One and features over 200 artists from around the globe. Alonzo King LINES Ballet presents two powerful works on July 25: Biophony and SAND.

Biophony is choreographer Alonzo King's 2015 collaboration with natural bio-acoustician Bernie Krauseand composer Richard Blackford. Krause, author of The Great Animal Orchestra, spent over four decades traveling around the world with microphones tuned to the earth and its creatures. Today, his archive holds more than 4,500 hours of field recordings in which 15,000 species can be heard in their natural habitat. His recordings immortalize not individual animals, but entire ecosystems -- what Krause terms biophony, a habitat's collective sonic imprint. These animal soundscapes provide the inspiration for Alonzo King's work. King's artistic approach has always been closely attuned to nature; he conceives of his work as "thought structures" deeply engrained in the laws of energy, matter and physics that govern our natural world. His choreography is grounded in the excavation of each dancer's voice. In this work the stage becomes an ecosystem, the dancers its sonic players, each immersed in their own song and yet attuned to it all.

SAND is Alonzo King's critically acclaimed 2016 collaboration with tenor saxophonist Charles Lloydand jazz pianist Jason Moran. King's choreography is fertile creative ground for the trailblazing duo -two generations of jazz masters who share "an unerring ability to get to the emotional heart of a song" (JazzTimes).

Celebrating its 35thAnniversary this year, Alonzo King LINES Ballet has been guided by the unique artistic vision of Alonzo King since 1982. Collaborating with noted composers, musicians, and visual artists from around the world, King creates works that draw on a diverse set of deeply rooted cultural traditions; channeling the powerful understanding that ballet is part art, part science, and part primal intuition. His choreography, brought to life by the extraordinary LINES Ballet dancers, is branded with artistic excellence and bold imagination and shows us the meaningful way that art connects us to each other and the world around us. For more than three decades, the conceptual design, production, aesthetic and artistic direction of each project has been shaped in collaboration with Creative Director and LINES Ballet Co-Founder Robert Rosenwasser.

About Alonzo King LINES Ballet

Alonzo King LINES Ballet is a celebrated contemporary ballet company that has been guided since 1982 by the unique artistic vision of Alonzo King. Collaborating with noted composers, musicians, and visual artists from around the world, Alonzo King creates works that draw on a diverse set of deeply rooted cultural traditions, imbuing classical ballet with new expressive potential. Alonzo King understands ballet as a science - founded on universal, geometric principles of energy and evolution - and continues to develop a new language of movement from its classical forms and techniques. Alonzo King's visionary choreography, brought to life by the extraordinary LINES Ballet dancers, is renowned for connecting audiences to a profound sense of shared humanity.

"Alonzo King is one of the few bona fide visionaries in the ballet world today, and we are fortunate to have him and his LINES Ballet in San Francisco," the San Francisco Chronicle proclaims. LINES Ballet has been featured at venues such as the Venice Biennale, Monaco Dance Forum, Maison de la Dance, the Edinburgh International Festival, Montpellier Danse, the Wolfsburg Festival, the Holland Dance Festival, and most recently Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris.

"The term LINES alludes to all that is visible in the phenomenal world. There is nothing that is made or formed without line. Lines are in our fingerprints, the shapes of our bodies, constellations, geometry. It implies genealogical connection, progeny and spoken word. It addresses direction, communication, and design. A line of thought. A boundary or eternity. A melodic line. From vibration or dot to dot it is the visible organization of what we see." -Alonzo King

About City Parks Foundation

At City Parks Foundation, we are dedicated to invigorating and transforming parks into dynamic, vibrant centers of urban life through sports, arts, community development and education programs for all New Yorkers. Our programs and community building initiatives - located in more than 350 parks, recreation centers and public schools across New York City - reach 425,000 people each year. Our ethos is simple: we believe thriving parks mean thriving communities.

AboutSummerStage

SummerStage is presented by City Parks Foundation and is New York's largest free outdoor performing arts festival. SummerStage annually presents more than 100 performances in 18 parks throughout the five boroughs. With performances ranging from American pop, Latin, world music, dance and theater, SummerStage fills a vital niche in New York City's summer arts festival landscape. Since its inception 33 years ago, more than six million people from New York City and around the world have enjoyed SummerStage. SummerStage is presented by Capital One

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