Dance Review | Alonzo King LINES’ ‘Deep River’ Runs Through the Soul

Alonzo King LINES Ballet’s performance of Deep River was anything but traditional. Stopping in at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara on April 26 — between performances at the oh-so-prestigious Lincoln Center in New York City and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. — this extremely contemporary ballet is more transformational than traditional, definitely breaking barriers of the form, with nary a tutu in sight and only one or two of the dozen dancers en pointe.

Created as part of LINES Ballet’s 40th anniversary season last year, choreographer Alonzo King is a Santa Barbara High School grad, so his homecoming made the local performance all the more special.

The show itself is a tapestry of beautiful forms and shapes, with spiritually inspired music from both Black and Jewish traditions, composed by Jason Moran and sung primarily by Lisa Fischer, a powerhouse vocalist who I remember well from the documentary 20 Feet From Stardom. She performs on stage for some of the venues, but in Santa Barbara the music was recorded rather than live. However, the majority of the company is on stage for most of the time, with solos and pas de deux woven seamlessly together, all very much a part of the whole. As the choreography alternates between ensembles there are angular ripples of sharp movements and turbulence, but mostly the river of motion just keeps rolling along.

It’s such an aesthetically pleasing piece, it’s easy to appreciate it even without the more traditional constructions of story.

King himself declined to discuss many specifics of the meaning of Deep River, preferring to have the audience draw their own conclusions from a mostly abstract, non-linear experience, as he shared with UCSB Professor of Theater and Dance Ninotchka Bennahum in a “talk back” after the performance. In a preview interview King told Independent reporter Callie Fausey that the piece was intended 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 program notes described Deep River as “a call to keep hope, to make the lotus bloom in the mud, and to look at each other as a family of souls.” The show was also yet another excellent reminder of how fortunate dance fans are to have UCSB Arts & Lectures in our hood.

Some of my personal takeaways invoked imagery of a river flowing together and then apart, as well as scenes that made me think of slavery and bondage. But the bare, minimalistic staging put the dancing itself at the forefront of the show, rather than the storytelling. And the dancers themselves definitely made for an enjoyable evening punctuated by strength, musicality, and athleticism.