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Alonzo King:
Dancing with the Moon
I. In Philadelphia The vessel has to be empty for the spirit to enter. —Alonzo King It’s midmorning in a sunlight-drenched, second-floor dance studio at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts. Alonzo King stands with his back to a wall of mirrors wearing a white T-shirt, loose chinos, white sneakers, and his signature white, close-fitting cotton cap. The gentle and genial African American dancer, choreographer, and teacher addresses eight dancers arrayed at barres along the studio’s other walls. Most are young professionals, members of the Pennsylvania Ballet. They begin their warm-ups for the master class dressed in multiple layers and odd combinations of T-shirts, tights, parachute pants, and cut-off sweats. As the session progresses, the dancers warm to the task and layers are shed. On one slender young woman’s ankle, lurking beneath rose-petal pink tights, a convoluted snake tattoo is partly revealed. Arriving late on this third morning of a four-day program, and affectionately addressed by the group of twenty-something dancers, is the considerably older Donald Rumsford, a former soloist and now ballet master for Philadanco, one of the city’s largest modern companies, who has joined King’s four-day “Choreographic Encounter” for dance professionals. At the invitation of Philadelphia’s Dance Advance, and at no cost to the participants, King is here to challenge some of these professionals’ assumptions about ballet and help propel them into their fledgling careers as choreographers. After some preparatory stretches, he sets the morning’s first combination, gives directions to the pianist, then asks the dancers to begin the plié combination “as if for the first time.” Dancers, he reminds the group, must renew the relationship with their art daily, otherwise it becomes stale and may lead to divorce. “Don’t prove anything, drink in the music,” he urges them as they sink into an elastic plié with a sensuous cambré back. “Experience the wonder of the demi-plié, the wonder of movement in space. It’s a statement, not a position; please live it.” Over the course of the class, as he demonstrates various movement combinations, King appears to be only marking the exercise; yet when he releases his touch on the barre, even in his clunky sneakers, his somewhat substantial form appears at ease, balanced, and perfectly centered. Later, when I remark on his fine sense of balance, he notes how the mirror is the West’s “worst contribution” to the art of dance, often becoming a psychological crutch. “You want to go inside because that’s where the mystery is,” he tells the dancers. “The mirror indicates doubt. No. Go in, go in.” Although the movements King calls for are second nature to these ballet professionals, he asks them to approach them in a new way. The ballet dancer’s lower body is perennially overeducated, he complains. “The torso is the leader, the king, the mother ship—the limbs are just satellites,” he tells the dancers in motion, explaining how he wants to see the legs work in collaboration with the torso. “The torso is the treasure, where the heart is, carried by wonderful servants; it’s the Ark of the Covenant.” This reeducation of the ballet dancer’s torso and back is often the first thing the dance watcher notices about Lines Ballet, King’s own performing company. Classical positions and placement are all employed, but the way the dancers arrive at them—vertebrae by vertebrae—contributes much to their beauty. Teaching is very much part of King’s dance vocation. As his long-time colleague and Lines company director Pam Hagan explains, “Alonzo sees ballet as a scientific approach to movement—scientific in that it has been tried and has predictable outcomes.” The dancers continue to peel off layers of clothing as pianist Steve Mato moves into a march rhythm for a petit allegro. “I want to see you become arabesque instead of doing it,” he tells the assembled dancers. “You are all musicians,” he continues, with a gesture toward Mato, “and he’s a dancer.” Later, as he sets a fairly complex adagio combination, King asks rhetorically, “What am I looking for? Beauty, generosity, compassion, fearlessness.” An afternoon of choreographic experimentation follows the morning class. Later that evening, speaking at a public forum presented by Dance Advance, King characterizes the dancer’s life as one of sacrifice—“a life of service”—a notion that seems out of synch with the self-centered, mercantile America of the twenty-first century. Part of the dancer’s service, he explains, is to find ways to reach out and connect with her or his viewers. “You are educators by the way you move, you are teachers,” he tells the dancers. And he constantly encourages his dancers to be generous toward their audiences, “because that’s who artists are,” he says, “the greatest givers.” |
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