With works that mix cultural traditions and mighty themes, Alonzo King's LINES Ballet really moves-in more ways than one

Alonzo King is not one for idle thought. When the Georgia Straight catches up with the visionary choreographer on the line from his San Francisco home, King immediately delves into how, while waiting for the phone to ring, he has just been contemplating personal contentment, selfishness, greed, and isolation. It's heavy stuff for a late-afternoon chat, all coming from someone who doesn't even own a television. But then this is a man who is renowned for making movement with meaning, for loading every gesture with an emotional wallop.

"Whether people want money or need drugs, they think it's going to allay their pain, give them some kind of joy," says the artistic director of LINES Ballet. "They're going at it all backward. Technologically, we can do so many things in our society. But damn if humanity ain't so far behind."

Drawing on everything from the migratory pattern of birds to the influence of his father, Slater King, a civil-rights activist, King designs dance that is as physically ferocious as it is spiritually moving. His work appears in the repertoires of such companies as the Joffrey Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Hong Kong Ballet.

Jay Hirabayashi saw LINES Ballet perform at France's Montpellier Dance Festival in 2007. The Kokoro Dance cofounder knew instantly he wanted to bring the company to Vancouver.

"We saw 21 shows, and most of the artistic directors seemed to be interested in more conceptual work; there wasn't a whole lot of dancing," Hirabayashi explains in a phone interview. "There were a few where the choreographer proved he was interested in the body, and one was Alonzo King.

"His choreography is highly kinetic, big, brash, bold, and really exciting to watch....I knew Vancouver just had to see them."

To that end, Kokoro Dance's Vancouver International Dance Festival is copresenting LINES Ballet with North Vancouver's Centennial Theatre, where the company performs Thursday and Friday (October 9 and 10). (Kokoro had hoped to have LINES attend its fest next March and April, but the companies' schedules didn't align.)

Part of what makes King's choreography unique is his exploration of cultural fusion. He has collaborated with Japanese classical composer Somei Satoh, Polish composer Pawel Szyma?ski, and Nubian oud master Hamza El Din. In 2001, he brought 16 Pygmy dancers and musicians from the Lobaye Forest of the Central African Republic for BaAka: The People of the Forest. And last year he mounted Shaolin, an ambitious piece that had LINES' nine members sharing the stage with Shaolin monks from China.

When it visits Vancouver, LINES Ballet will perform Rasa, another illustration of King's ability to seamlessly blend cultural traditions. Set to music by tabla master Ustad Zakir Hussain, the piece mixes classical ballet's precise, elegant lines with the addictive rhythms of Indian drumming.

"The tabla is beautiful music, but we're all part of one world," King explains. "Whether it's from Bulgaria or Soweto, I will scour the earth for music that will move my heart. I don't necessarily consider different cultures as ”˜other'.

"What the complex rhythms of tabla have in common with the demands of classical ballet are the devotion and concentration that the artists who practise them must have," he adds. "And at the heart of the music and dance is a sense of joy."

Contrasting with the Indian influences in Rasa are the European stylings King plays with in Irregular Pearl, which is also on the Vancouver program. The work's title is the literal meaning of baroque, he notes. This ensemble piece, set to compositions by George Frederick Handel and Antonio Vivaldi, among others, examines the "surprising freedom" that exists within the complex structure of baroque music. That freedom, King says, allows him to convey emotionally mighty themes such as those he was pondering before this afternoon phone call.

"Dance is thought made visible," King says. "I'm obsessed with truth, with the essence of things, not their appearance. When it comes to dance, people need to drop all expectations and not expect it to look like anything they've seen already."