To spend a half-hour speaking with choreographer Alonzo King is to contemplate the meaning of life and art, and to ponder the importance of truth and beauty in our times.

The veteran artist, a onetime performer for Dance Theater of Harlem who founded San Francisco’s Alonzo King LINES Ballet in 1982, goes deep—in conversation and on-stage.

“Given the short time we have on the planet, I wouldn’t want to go shallow,” he says wryly from home in San Francisco, his voice still carrying the warm lilt of his Georgia roots. “If you want to go diving for pearls of wisdom, you have to go deep; they’re not found in shallow waters.

“If you’re not asking ‘What’s the purpose of life?’ you’re just showing tricks and skill and entertainment.”

King’s philosophy stretches into the intense creative process he plunges into with his contemporary ballet company’s beyond-honed dancers, just as it affects the earnest research he takes on for every piece he stages.

For Sand, the work he’s bringing here as part of a Vancouver International Dance Festival double bill, he’s excavated every conceivable trait and poetic quality of his subject matter. He’s researched the qualities of its constituent minerals, like quartz; he’s thought about the way wind and waves form sand into patterns.

“We delve into everything,” he says.

The work, performed in front of an ethereal, long white fringe curtain, has also taken a lot of its inspiration from its music—as always, for King, who has previously used everything from Sephardic songs and archival synagogue recordings to traditional Indian and African melodies. This time, he revisits jazz, using music by celebrated sax player Charles Lloyd and pianist Jason Moran. But if the idea of pairing that freeform musical style with his exacting, polished ballet seems incongruous, think again.

“I think people misinterpret the term free jazz. It’s incredibly disciplined,” he says. “The point of the law is to create freedom.” He talks about the form as African, and the way Johann Sebastian Bach and classical Indian music used some of the same approaches.

And then, as ever, he takes the concept to a higher level, one that offers insight into humanity and avoids easy categorization. “We look for labels the same way we look for races,” King suggests. “This person is this, this person is that. We’re not that. We’re human beings.

“When you’re art-making, your personal story gets out of the way. You are in the realm of ideas and you are reaching profundity.…Most musicians and dancers are working in a realm that words are too clumsy to speak about.”

The other piece on the program here is Shostakovich, set to the composer’s angular string quartets. King is proud to have recently debuted it to wild applause at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Dmitri Shostakovich’s hometown.

“The music is sublime. It is wonderful work to enter and play with,” says King, who has set the fluttery, restless piece en pointe.

King, who has creations in the repertoires of the Royal Swedish Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet, and many others, seems as inspired by work as ever. He travels less and less with his company, but he seems even more driven by ideas and a sense of purpose.

“I feel there is more clarity,” he agrees. “I just want to work. I’m on planet Earth and I want to work till I’m not on planet Earth.”

The Vancouver International Dance Festival presents Alonzo King LINES Ballet at the Vancouver Playhouse on Friday and Saturday (March 3 and 4).