King of dance: Alonzo King and his LINES Ballet mark 25 years of dance innovation

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For as long as Alonzo King can remember, movement has fascinated him. "Whenever I was in a room full of adults, I found that the way they moved was more revealing and accurate than what they said," he recalls. "The physical form was a truth for me.'" This concept of movement as a form of truth-telling has resonated with him throughout his career as a dancer and choreographer, and it is the core philosophy behind LINES Ballet, the celebrated San Francisco-based dance company he co-founded 25 years ago.

Since its inception in 1982, critics and dance lovers alike have praised LINES for its global and artistic vision as well as its technical virtuosity. The company works 10 months out of the year, touring throughout the United States and abroad. In Europe, the group has been featured at prestigious arts festivals like the Venice Biennale and the 25th anniversary of Maison de la Danse in Lyon, France. This year, the troupe will perform at Tanzsommer in Austria as well as Montpellier Dance in France, and LINES is already slated to perform at the Holland Dance Festival in The Hague.

King has assembled what has been described as a United Nations of extraordinary dancers who bring a wealth of experience and expertise to the ensemble. Each is an accomplished soloist in his or her own right, and four of King's dancers have been recipients of the distinguished Princess Grace Award, an unprecedented honor for a modest-sized dance company. "Alonzo is fortunate that some of his dancers have been with him for several years," says longtime LINES Ballet board member Cheryl Ward. "They are committed and passionate, and they understand his vision."

For dancer Keelan Whitmore, who has been with LINES for a year, being a part of the company has been as much personal revelation as professional endeavor. "It's given me a new perspective and opened me up to a different way of exploring my art form," says the 26-year-old Rockford, Ill, native who formerly danced with the Kansas City Ballet. "With Alonzo's work, you can't hide behind the choreography. You're not an automaton. there's always individual exploration in the process."

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Through LINES, King has expanded the parameters of traditional ballet. In other words, don't expect to see Swan Lake: His approach is more anthropological. "Often people think of ballet as a certain [European] dance style that happened during the 16th and 17th centuries," he explains, "but it's really a science of movement whose genesis goes back much further than that."

Chris Hellman, a renowned San Francisco-based arts philanthropist and former ballerina with London's Festival Ballet, says King's ability to merge classical and modern is what makes his work so interesting. "Sometimes ballet gets a little stiff, but-his [dances] are open, free and not tied down to past works [performed] in ballet. He uses the medium very well for what he wants to communicate."

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Another winning ingredient in the company's success is King's knack for partnering with talent who "get" his mission. He's worked with legendary jazz saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders. Sweet Honey in the Rock thunder Bernice Johnson Reagon, actor Danny Glover. Japanese classical composer Somei Satoh and Polish composer Pavel Syzmanski "He's worldly in his creative endeavors and Iris reach is broad." says Ward. "He uses music that people don't always get to hear. and the tact that he gets the musicians to perform live makes them as much a part of the performance as the dancers are."

That level of professionalism, King says. continues to get his attention. "When brilliant people are doing brilliant things, I want to work with them," says King. He'll even journey great distances to meet them. In 1999, he flew to the Central African Republic, traveled under military escort by Jeep, then canoed down the Ubangi River to the village of Mougoumba to meet the Baka people (Pygmies) whose music and dance he'd researched extensively. Two years later, in 2001, he flew 16 Baka dancers and musicians to San Francisco to perform with LINES. This past spring, King fused ballet with Chinese martial arts when he invited Shaolin monks to perform with his company. That strong interest ha cross-cultural connections, he says. can be attributed to his mother. "She had friends from Ghana and Ethiopia who would come over and play their music and teach us their dances, so I was learning from different cultures as a kid."

Learning about the world at large was a key value that his parents instilled in him and his five siblings growing up in Albany, Ga. (at 5, King moved to Santa Barbara, Calif.). His father, Slater King, a civil rights activist and prominent businessman, introduced his children to Eastern religions and mediation long before it was fashionable. His mother, Valencia King Nelson, was a dancer during her college days at Fisk University. She influenced King's love of movement. "I was inspired by the way she manipulated music," King says.