Alonzo King LINES Ballet Will Perform a Tribute to Alice Coltrane and Ravel's Ma mère l'Oye

Alonzo King LINES Ballet has announced the programming for its Fall Season, September 26–September 29 at the Blue Shield of California Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. This season honors the timeless contributions of Alice Coltrane and the imaginative storytelling of Maurice Ravel through Alonzo King’s visionary choreography.

In an extraordinary collaboration, Alonzo King LINES Ballet partners with The John & Alice Coltrane Home and the Coltrane Family to celebrate the life and work of the legendary spiritual leader, composer, pianist, and harpist Alice Coltrane, an artist celebrated for her pioneering and trailblazing career. As part of "The Year of Alice," LINES Ballet will premiere a new work set to her transformative music. This premiere is part of a series of nationwide tributes honoring Alice Coltrane’s extraordinary legacy. LINES Ballet is joining organizations including Impulse! Records, the Detroit Jazz Festival, the Hammer Museum, and The New York Historical Society to honor Coltrane through performances and exhibitions. 

Alice Coltrane forged masterful creative works, composing and performing music that beams universal love and spirituality. Her iconic works include Journey In Satchidananda (one ofRolling Stone’s 500 greatest albums), A Monastic Trio, Universal Consciousness, Ptah, and the El Daoud. Coltrane created her own style of sound, inspired by gospel, classical, and jazz music. Alonzo King choreographed his very first work to the music of Alice Coltrane, which premiered at the company's inaugural performance in 1982 at the McKenna Theater, San Francisco State University. King continues to draw inspiration from her groundbreaking contributions. "I've been mesmerized by the transcendental music of the incredible Alice Coltrane since I was a child," says King.

Jazz saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, Alice’s son, reflects on her enduring impact: “Alice was ahead of her time, one of the first people to move outside the mainstream, and certainly one of the first female, Black, American jazz musicians to record her own music in her own studio, and to release music on her own terms…people across all generations are finding their way to Alice’s music in a myriad of different ways. It’s hard to pinpoint what makes her music so powerful, but there’s something in her spirit, in her intention, that is very clear—and people can feel that immediately.”

The Fall 2024 Season will also feature Alonzo King's recent collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony, set to the enchanting 1912 score Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) by famed composer, pianist, and conductor Maurice Ravel. Here the LINES Ballet dancers delve into the enchanting world of Ravel’s Ma mère l'Oye, infusing the story with a new interpretation. King shared his approach in the program notes for the San Francisco Symphony:

“I’m not trying to recreate Mother Goose fairy tales. My intention is to unearth the deeper allegorical meanings beneath the fairy tales and illustrate those with dance. These deep metaphysical truths are so large they’ve had to be shrunk into stories. When I hear the sleeping princess, that’s a universal theme. And you know what it’s saying? All of us are in some somnambulistic state until we wake up. True nobility is inside all of us. But it’s deeply asleep—and it can only be woken up by love. And so everybody is the sleeping princess.”

Lisa Hirsch from the San Francisco Classical Voice wrote, “King’s choreography is richly in tune with Ravel’s music. Every movement and every dancer reflect the clarity and phrasing of the score, no matter how complex the physical movements.”

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