Acclaimed dancer and choreographer Alonzo King, founder and artistic director of Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet in San Francisco, will take part in a public panel discussion on “Understanding Dance as the Language We Embody” at 4 p.m. Sept. 22 in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge.
The talk comes as part of a residency sponsored by a grant from the National College Choreography Initiative. The grant will support a variety of workshops and master classes with both King and Arturo Fernandez, ballet master for LINES, Sept. 12-23.
In addition, King and Fernandez will set excerpts from two of King’s works — In To Get Out and Koto — on students in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences’ Dance Program.
Both pieces will be performed as part of Reach/Rebound, the Washington University Dance Theatre (WUDT) concert Dec. 2-4 in Edison Theatre.
The panel discussion, part of the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences’ Translation Series, is free and open to the public.
Other panelists are theater director Ron Himes, the Henry E. Hampton Jr. Artist-in-Residence and founder of the St. Louis Black Repertory Company; dancer Cecil Slaughter, artist-in-residence and director of WUDT; and Gerald L. Early, Ph.D., the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences and director of the Center for the Humanities.
For more information about the panel discussion, call 935-5576.
In addition, Fernandez will host an open showing of In To Get Out and Koto at 7 p.m. Sept. 23 in the Annelise Mertz Dance Studio, Room 207 of the Mallinckrodt Student Center. The showing is free and open to the public and will include the short video Alonzo King Goes to Venice. For more information on the showing, call 935-5858.
The National College Choreography Initiative, now in its sixth year, is underwritten by Dance/USA, a national service organization for professional dance, in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). This year, the initiative awarded 35 grants totaling $280,000.
Mary Jean Cowell, director of the Dance Program, is project director for the King grant, while Slaughter serves as rehearsal director for the WUDT works.
Alonzo King
King has choreographed dances for many of many of the world’s finest companies, including the Joffrey Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet, Dance Theater of Harlem and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. He has worked extensively in opera and television and served as guest ballet master for the National Ballet of Canada, Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, San Francisco Ballet and others.
LINES Ballet, which King founded in 1982, has since emerged as an international touring company and worked with musicians ranging from jazz great Pharoah Sanders to India’s Zakir Hussain and Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock.
In 1989, King inaugurated the San Francisco Dance Center, now one of West Coast’s largest dance facilities. In 2001, he launched the LINES Ballet School and Pre-Professional Program.
King’s numerous honors include four Isadora Duncan Awards, an NEA Choreographer’s Fellowship and an Irvine Fellowship in Dance. In 2005, he was named a Master of African-American Choreography by the Kennedy Center.
Next April, Edison Theatre and Dance St. Louis will present LINES Ballet as part of the Edison Theatre OVATIONS! Series. For more information on that show, call 935-6543.
Arturo Fernandez
Fernandez has danced in both ballet and modern companies, including San Diego Ballet, Arizona Ballet, New Jersey Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, Les Ballets Trocadero de Monte Carlo, Oakland Ballet and ODC/San Francisco. In 1991, he collaborated with Brenda Way and KT Nelson of ODC to create Krazy Kat for the San Francisco Ballet, and in 1992 he became ballet master for LINES.
Fernandez has choreographed for Inland Pacific Ballet, Los Angeles Dance Theater, San Francisco’s School of the Arts and the Alabama School of Fine Arts. He has also set ballets by King on companies throughout the United States.