Audience in Hong Kong might not know the San Francisco-based contemporary ballet company Alonzo King LINES Ballet very well since this is their ever first visit to Hong Kong; although the company is quite established, founded in 1982 by the nationally known choreographer and educator Alonzo King. Interesting enough, the company also holds a Joint BFA Program in Dance with the Dominican University of California among other education and community dance initiatives.
This September, the company brought to Hong Kong King’s creation of The Propelled Heart, premiered in 2015.
The Propelled Heart draws inspiration from Sri Yukteswar’s book The Holy Science writing about the stages of the heart’s evolution - namely “dark, propelled, steady, devoted, and clean”.
King has been interested in the subject of the heart and its development for some time. Apart from The Propelled Heart, he has also created another work The Steady Heart in 2014.
King aimed The Propelled Heart as a work of abstraction to express his understanding of the propelled heart when one started to get enlightened, and embarked on the questioning process of the status quo, trying to discover what truth is.
This work marks a collaboration between King and the Grammy Award winning singer, Lisa Fischer, whom the Hong Kong audience might know her better in the Academy Award winning documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom. Obviously her brilliant performance and stage presence, together with the music composed by JC Maillard have elevated the work into another level.
King’s Unique Movement Stokes
King approached the theme with sixteen sessions, which blended together in two acts, with the first act more on the struggle one finds in life and the second on the gradual achievement of freedom and enlightenment.
The work assembles an abstract painting where King splashed strokes on his 3D canvas on stage, like the action of the abstract expressionist Jackson Pollack.
His signature strokes speak well for this abstract theme, in generating desired energies of agony, struggle, anguish, yeaning, joy, bliss or freedom, all through the intricate movements by the amazing execution of his team of beautiful dancers.
King named his company LINES Ballet with “lines” in big caps, with his philosophy that “the term LINES alludes to all that is visible in the phenomenal world”, which he believes everything could ultimately be represented in ‘lines’. In his company, he emphasized on the extended lines of the dancers, both in their long-lined physique, and the extension that their abilities could reach.
Apart from the outstanding lines of the body, King also emphasizes the points making up the line, one could therefore notice each body part, even the smallest, move so meticulously, many times in oppositions, and fluidly throughout the work. At the same time, the core of the body is so strong that allows all extensions to move in such amazing speed.
This devotion to the movement language innovation created for King his unique strokes to help set up the tone for the piece, which is beautiful to watch.
Infusion of Music and Dance
The movement strokes are especially prominent in the beautiful opening, starting with four dancers sitting in a line in front of the audience, they then starts moving around one by one to the serene sporadic sounds created by a dulcimer, hang and flute. The dancers keep moving on the bare stage lit with simple yet effective lighting until they reach the back of the side stage, where Liza Fischer entered with her resonating voice. The dancers echo her voices with their bodies, the voice and the movements infuse together. The voice not only moves the dancers into another state of being, but also moves the audience into a higher level of consciousness.
Another beautiful infusion of the two medium lies in the Joint Performance of Fischer and the whole company.
Fischer stands in the center of the stage with her soul singing, welcoming three dancers emerging from the side stage - dancers that have transformed into creatures, to animals, finding their way in this mysterious world.
They climb and proceed towards Fischer, where she touches each one of them, pulling their head up and bring them onto standing. It is this magical touch that allows the creatures to rise, to find their own spine and finally be on their legs, which then walk off with their still fragile bodies, some though fall back to the floor soon after. This sequence is beautifully made, recalling the Darwin’s development of men, or maybe King’s idea of the heart’s development.
The Joint Performance continues with the dancers moving around Fischer, some dancers rest on her shoulder to regain strength, to search for comfort. Lisa shows not only her sensibility in her voice, but also her movements - the gentle touch to everyone coming to her for comfort, as if she is the mother earth for those being lost, sympathizing them and giving them strength and willpower to move on further.
Detached from abstraction to reality
The collaboration with the vocalist is what King has worked towards throughout this piece, although the later parts do not have the tightness in the integration as before. Sometimes music jumped out as the lead and sometimes the dance does, leading the audience not able to see the unity of the work.
Moreover, the later part of the work approaches the theme more literally in trying to delivering messages through songs, or words, like using Duke Ellington Come Sunday, Bertha Gober We’ll Never Turn Back or more, which under Fischer’s voice, was still beautifully sounded. Although it also somehow detaches the audience from the multiple imaginaries the first session has established for them.
This is especially noted with the song How Can I Ease the Pain at the end of Act 1. It could be well understood why this song is used, as this is the Grammy award song of Fischer in her debut album in 1991, although pity to say that the popular song arrangement has pulled the audience from the vast imagination back to reality. The accompany of the two duet dances, especially with the ladies dressed in glittering ‘evening dresses’, has turned the abstraction into something we are very familiar with in popular media.
To Feel it with your Heart
When explaining on how to appreciate his work, King suggested his audience to engage in their subconscious level, to feel it from their hearts, and use less of their minds. Since obviously this work comes from a subconscious level of his own understanding or inspiration from his readings, together with his vast personal experience throughout life.
As in experiencing other abstract works of art, it touches some and not so the others, yet whatever responses the viewers have, the beautiful movement strokes and exquisite dancers of the company will surely leave a print in one’s mind.
《The Propelled Heart 》
Arts group: Alonzo King LINES Ballet (USA)
Date: 1/9/2017, 8pm
Venue: Auditorium, Kwai Tsing Theatre
Biography of the author：Catherine Yau is a freelance Dance Practitioner, focusing on dance education and dance writing. She graduated with her MFA degree in Dance at the New York University and MA in Literary and Cultural Studies at The University of Hong Kong. She is currently the Guest Lecturer in Dance at The Education University of Hong Kong. She also serves as the Examiner of Dance for The Hong Kong Arts Development Council.
Photo credit: Leisure and Cultural Services Department
