Adji Cissoko<\/a> climbs atop Shuaib Elhassan\u2019s knees as he crouches, then somehow cascades her limbs over and around his shoulders and torso, again and again as he remains squatting. In their final duet, she wraps arms and legs around him, the two frenzied with a need for one another that feels oddly gentle and reassuring.<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
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Lines Ballet dancers Adji Cissoko and Shuaib Elhassan<\/p>\n
Chris Hardy\/Lines Ballet<\/p>\n
The costumes by Lines Creative Director Robert Rosenwasser gradually strip down from shimmering drapings to simple dark trunks. But if there\u2019s a feeling of thoughtful containment in \u201cLegacy,\u201d it comes mostly from Spalding\u2019s lyrics. Ideas of lineage accumulate, in quirky prosody. \u201cIf we untether from a narrow monetary definition of inheritance \u2026\u201d Spalding offers in lighthearted melody, while Elhassan and the extraordinarily rippling Theo Duff Grant circle each other, and Ma\u00ebl Amatoul and Tatum Qui\u00f1\u00f3nez sit in a window of designer Alexander V. Nichols\u2019s light.<\/p>\n
Bits of language and musical ideas cycle through in 16 sections, gradually making the case that the gift of honoring our ancestors is an unshakeable sense of home. In the middle of \u201cLegacy,\u201d we suddenly hear a private voice message from a warmly cajoling speaker: \u201cHey! Where are you going? You\u2019re supposed to be here.\u201d It\u2019s jarring, yet feels intentionally placed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Tatum Qui\u00f1\u00f3nez and Lines Ballet company<\/p>\n
Chris Hardy\/Lines Ballet<\/p>\n
Like a well-constructed poem, Spalding\u2019s lyrics and music create a delicately patterned form. This clearly influenced King\u2019s choreography in ways a first viewing can only begin to reveal. King\u2019s ballets, for all their genius, typically seem episodic and sprawling, the ordering of sections interchangeable. But \u201cLegacy\u201d leaves a sense of compositional just-rightness.<\/p>\n
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From such groundedness, King\u2019s 2024 work \u201cOde to Alice Coltrane\u201d takes us to a heavenly realm, the aurora borealis of Seah Johnson\u2019s lighting design shining overhead as the visionary jazz harpist music\u2019s shimmers. How appropriate that \u201cLegacy\u201d is placed alongside this tribute to one of Spalding\u2019s greatest female jazz ancestors. (I have to admit that at 47 minutes, I expected \u201cOde\u201d would feel overlong. I was wrong.)\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of King\u2019s best unison ensemble work frames the wildly ecstatic sections of this suite, beginning with a line of crawling dancers in front of glowing panels that later become tall portals of blue light. From the low rumblings of \u201cMigration Walking,\u201d the company fully caught the groove of Coltrane\u2019s most famous composition, the opening track of her 1971 album \u201cJourney in Satchidananda.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Alonzo King Lines Ballet dancers Joshua Francique, left, and Mae\u0308l Amatoul in\u00a0\u201cLegacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Hardy\/Lines Ballet<\/p>\n
Qui\u00f1\u00f3nez, leggy as an egret in a diaphanous russet dress, seemed to flick the rhythm of the drumming right from the tips of her flinging arms. Amatoul is a wonderful young addition to the 11-member company, his bright jumps providing a beguiling contrast with the calm, rooted height of Lorris Eichinger. Marusya Madubuko, outstanding through the whole evening, kept drawing all the attention to her balance on one foot, as if ready to step into eternity.<\/p>\n
\u201cOde\u201d delivers us finally to \u201cGoing Home,\u201d with its awesome overwhelm of strings, bass, drums and Coltrane layering organ, piano, harp and timpani. It all lifts us, again and again, through a surprising chord change to a higher bliss. Cissoko stretched her taut instrument of flesh and bones into stunningly extended arabesques, then exploded in joy. It was almost too much. Almost.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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How unbelievable that these artists make their home right in San Francisco, in studios near the dirty, blessed corner of Seventh and Market streets.<\/p>\n
Rachel Howard is a freelance writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alonzo King Lines Ballet dancer Mikal Gilbert and company in\u00a0\u201cLegacy.\u201d Chris Hardy\/Lines Ballet The dank corner of Third…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[329,7,1472,330,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-264306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-arts-and-entertainment","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-dance","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-san-francisco","13":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","14":"tag-san-francisco-news","15":"tag-sf","16":"tag-sf-headlines","17":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}