Alonzo King LINES Goes ‘Deep River’ at the Arlington in Santa Barbara

In the words of visionary choreographer and LINES Ballet artistic director Alonzo King, dance is the “soul language,” communicating through movement. Or the self breaking free from the body. Or the lens through which we should see the world, forgoing the limitations of what is “logical.”

“Dancers are musicians,” King suggested. “And what they’re playing is the body.”

The way he views and speaks about both the world we live in and the worlds he creates is profound — like a mentor taking you by the shoulders to give you a good shake, pulling your mind from the gutter so you can once again smell the roses. 

King’s humble beginnings involved his mother and his first dance teacher at Santa Barbara Junior High. He graduated from Santa Barbara High School in 1969, before moving to San Francisco to start his own contemporary dance company in 1982. 

“Seeing those mountains every day when I would go to school, and being able to walk to the beach; there was a casual and sweet friendliness that was a part of my life in Santa Barbara,” King shared. “It was really idyllic. It had a wonderful effect on me to grow up in that city.”

On Friday, April 26, King will return to Santa Barbara to present his newest creation, Deep River, on the Arlington Theatre’s stage in a presentation from UCSB Arts & Lectures. Deep River features electrifying and powerfully emotional movement tied to spiritual music from Black and Jewish traditions, scored by jazz pianist Jason Moran, alongside the stirring vocals of Grammy-award winning singer Lisa Fischer. 

King described the piece — which premiered last year to celebrate the internationally-recognized company’s 40th anniversary — as a reminder that “love is the ocean that we rose from, swim in, and will one day return to,” and that love can set us free. 

The earth is a wellspring of information and emotion, according to King, who used the natural world to explain much of his creative process. 

“Everything on this planet is conveying a message: whether that’s the behavior of human beings, plants, animals, rocks, architecture, landscapes, the small beetle. They’re all conveying a meaning,” he said. “We should all be drenched in the understanding that movement and sound were a part of creation — the planets, suns, moons and stars, what are they doing? They’re moving in a circular motion. If you stand still in a forest, you see the leaves falling, you see the insects crawling, your heart is beating.”

When you see flow, for example, “it’s the ocean. When you hear or see dissonance, it is thunder and lightning, it is this anger and structure and power. You see it everywhere. I mean, it’s so clear for those who can really experience the world and feel,” he said.

Great dancers and minds know how to tap into this ever-present energy, while recognizing that “their consciousness is not their body,” King continued.  And his dancers, he said, are extraordinary. “They’re the best in the world,” he added. “And I don’t say that as bragging — they are just extraordinary artists.”

King’s style has been called “unique” a thousand times over. Mixing daring technique with classical influences, the award-winning artist and teacher is said to blur the lines between genres. With a refreshing originality, his choreography presents a beautiful and graceful disruption of the stereotypical guise of ceramic fragility in ballet. It adheres to the linear, mathematical principles of the classical form, but in an authentic and dynamic manner. 

In other words, Deep River is no Nutcracker or Swan Lake. It is a contemporary, intriguing, and explosive visual story about finding hope where it is lost. And it communicates through feeling, more so than any written narrative could describe. It is the feeling of being held, both in the sense of dreadful imprisonment and in the sense of a deep and comforting embrace. 

To find inspiration, King explained that creatives, like himself, take a pick-axe and excavate it. “And sometimes we find a goldmine. And what do we do? We take credit for it, when in reality, we discovered something that was already there.” Creation, he added, begins in thought, as a “beautiful formula.” 

“The way that you think is everything,” King professed. “Dance is thought made visible. What is music? Music is thought made audible and visible. And so it’s all just forms of consciousness.” 

King said that, often, people expect a ballet performance to be “boring.” But if an hour-long conversation with King is any indication, he is incapable of being boring. From just a glimpse of Deep River, one can tell it is a three-course meal for the eyes and mind — a “thought structure,” as King calls it — served up on a golden platter. 

“Most of the time, people who have not been exposed to [ballet] find it not that compelling — it’s very ‘twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, la la la la la,’” King explained. “Like, it doesn’t have much resonance with reality. So to describe it, it would kind of be an anomaly because I’m dealing in a world in a language that is not verbal. It’s really movement and the subliminal communication that it conveys.”

Deep River is on stage at the Arlington Theatre on Friday, April 26 at 8 pm. For tickets and information, visit: artsandlectures.ucsb.edu. For more information about the company, see linesballet.org.