Alonzo King Lines Ballet featuring Lisa Fischer at YBCA Theater, November 13, 2015

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts presents the Propelled Heart, Alonzo King Lines Ballet 2015 Fall Home Season featuring Lisa Fischer and JC Maillard
2015-11-13
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater
701 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA .
8:00 PM, Friday, November 13, 2015

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2015 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2015 event list! ☸ On to the next event!

[8:11 PM lights down, announcements from Karim Baer]

1. [8:15 PM] Dulcimer, Hang and Flute
2. [8:19 PM] the Enigma Loop
3. [8:m PM] (the Company with Lisa Fischer)
4. [8:33 PM] If I Lose, part 1
5. [8:35 PM] If I Lose, part 2
6. [8:40 PM] Flight, part I
7. [8:44 PM] How Can I Ease the Pain
   [set ends 8:52 PM]

[9:14 PM lights down]

1. [9:15 PM] Flight, part 2
2. [9:19 PM] Breath of Heaven
3. [9:23 PM] Come Sunday
4. [9:27 PM] Free My Soul
5. [9:30 PM] Rain Gong
6. [9:32 PM] Adagio
7. [9:38 PM] Comfort
8. [9:42 PM] We'll Never Turn Back
9. [9:44 PM] Comfort, reprise
   [show ends 9:47 PM; applause and bows for a few minutes, then all off]

• Lisa Fischer: vox;
• JC Maillard: sazbass, keyboards, computer.

• Babatunji
• Robb Beresford
• Adji Cissoko
• Brett Conway
• Madeline DeVries
• Shuaib Elhassan
• Courtney Henry
• Yujin Kim
• Michael Montgomery
• Laura O'Malley
• Jeffrey Van Sciver
• Kara Wilkes

• Cody Chen: stage manager;
• Arturo Fernandez: ballet master;
• G. Chris Griffin: production and lighting director;
• Tara Kayton: company manager;
• Alonzo King: founder, choreographer;
• Alex Morgenthaler: lighting design;
• Joan Raymond: costumes;
• Robert Rosenwasser: founder, creative director;
• Meredith Webster: ballet master;
• Keely Weiman: kimono for Lisa Fischer

Although Friday traffic is still snarled at the Hwy 13/24 interchange, once past that mess, we are free to zip on down to West Oakland, where a parking space appears to be waiting for us (despite the circling crowd), and with only a minute or three between trains, we arrive in SF in record time – hardly more than 30 minutes after leaving the house. Boo-ya! In fact, we're so early that we stop in at the Grove on Mission off 3rd for a hot drink and a chocolate chip cookie. Nice to feel unrushed for a change!

Set break! The first half had plenty of surprises for me. First off, it appears to me that the current corps de dance is quite lithe and leggy. Second, much of the movement in this portion of the night seems either animalistic or spasmodically jerky – so much so that I almost felt as if those lithe bodies were being wasted. Only in the final piece of the set did the dancers, working as mixed gender couples, offer us anything like the more traditionally graceful ballet lines that I expected. Here's hoping that we get a larger portion of that sort of movement in the second half of the program.

Second half? More of the same. Very hard to follow the track breaks. Thankfully, the last segment featured high energy: good music, great singing, and lots of twirling dance. Come Sunday was rendered exquisitely as an unadorned solo for voice and a single dancer, who appeared to me to be communing with the spirit of grace that Lisa conjured with her voice. Darn good stuff!

Janice Berman posted a pretty thorough review of last week's season-opening show on SFCV.

Likewise, Ann Murphy posted a review for the Mercury News that offered insteresting information about the genesis of these pieces.

Finally, Jaime Robles posted a blog piece about the show as well.

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2015 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2015 event list! ☸ On to the next event!