A Review: Alonzo King Lines Ballet: Deep River

Alonzo King LINES Ballet performed Deep River by company co-founder, artistic director, and visionary choreographer Alonzo King (orange pants) on June 9 and 10, 2023, at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. The full-length work was set to a score by jazz pianist, composer, and MacArthur Fellow Jason Moran and featured Grammy Award-winning vocalist Lisa Fischer (black dress), who performed live for the engagement. Photo by Elaina Francis

By Darlene Donloe

Alonzo King is a highly-respected artistic director with a celebrated contemporary ballet company, who has been called a visionary choreographer.

Jason Moran has been called “a risk-taker, a trendsetter, and the most provocative thinker in current jazz.”

Lisa Fischer’s voice is out of this world. It’s like butter. She’s been called “addictive.”

When you combine their triple-threat talents, you’re in for an extraordinary soulful, and elegant evening of theater.

The three joined forces for The Wallis’s presentation of ‘Alonzo King LINES Ballet: Deep River’ held June 9-10, in the Bram Goldsmith Theater at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. 

As the curtain rises and the show begins, it reveals the perfectly toned bodies of 12 remarkable dancers who make quick work of mesmerizing the audience. 

A barefoot Lisa Fischer (the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom) slowly emerges in a flowing black frock, downstage right with a mic in both hands. She opens her mouth and heavenly sounds drift out. 

Deep River is a full-length work set to a score by jazz pianist, composer, and MacArthur Fellow Jason Moran whose music sets the mood. 

This was King’s second collaboration with Fischer and his ninth collaboration with Moran, which he created as a part of LINES Ballet’s recent 40th anniversary season.

Fischer and Babatunji brought down the house as he danced and she sang the Negro National Anthem ‘Lift Every Voice’. It was a tour-de-force performance that commanded rousing and appreciative applause from the audience.

Adji Cissoko
photo by Elaina Francis

The company includes Babatunji, Adji Cissoko, Madeline DeVries, Theo Duff-Grant, Lorris Eichinger, Shuaib Elhassan, Joshua Francique, James Gowan, Ilaria Guerra, Maya Harr, Marusya Madubuko, Michael Montgomery and Tatum Quinonez. 

A gorgeous show, ‘Deep River’ mixes dance with Black spirituals and invites audiences to look at human beings as the pinnacle of creation.

Bending the lines between classical and contemporary ballet, King draws on the strengths of his extraordinary dancers altering the way people look at ballet.

Hailed for its evocative work and unique artistic vision, LINES Ballet, based in San Francisco, adheres to the classical form—the linear, mathematical, and geometrical principles deeply rooted in the East-West continuum.   

Deep River is a call to keep hope and to look at each other as a family of souls. The moving work melds dance with Black spirituals and invite audiences to look at human beings as the pinnacle of creation.

King said that on the highest level, the work is 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.”

“As we look back on 40 years of work in the community, in ourselves, the programs, classes, and performances, both live and on film, we recognize that it is the same vision and belief that have carried us to this moment and will continue to carry this organization into the future,” said King. “We have strived to make obvious that art is the inheritance of every individual, that art activates evolutionary growth, is an intellectual virtue, and the fostering principle for all that is made, done, or known.” 

Forty years of outstanding, multi-disciplinary collaborations for the stage place the LINES Ballet company at the forefront of artistic innovation in ballet. LINES Ballet investigates deeply rooted affinities between Western and Eastern classical forms, elemental materials, the natural world, and the human spirit with each collaboration. 

At LINES Ballet, the artistic investigation is infinite and essential for it leads to what unites us as human beings: empathy, joy, and the ability to transcend.

LINES Ballet’s spring and fall home seasons and global tours share this vision of transformative, revelatory dance with 50,000+ audience members worldwide annually.

“The term LINES alludes to all that is visible in the phenomenal world,” said King. “There is nothing that is made or formed without a line. Lines are in our fingerprints, the shapes of our bodies, constellations, and geometry. It implies genealogical connection, progeny, and spoken word. It addresses direction, communication, and design. A line of thought. A boundary or eternity. A melodic line. From vibration or dot to dot it is the visible organization of what we see.” 

On the DONLOE SCALE: D (don’t bother), O (oh, no), N (needs work), L (likable), O (oh, yeah) and E (excellent) “Alonzo King LINES Ballet: ‘Deep River’” gets an E (excellent).