Toronto ballet lovers: Meet Alonzo King

Hope Muir, in her first full season as the National Ballet of Canada’s artistic director, is introducing Toronto to a celebrated American choreographer few in her audience are likely familiar with.

As the marquee work in a triple bill that launches the company’s hometown fall season, Muir is presenting Alonzo King’s “The Collective Agreement,” a formally abstract ballet rich in human implication and meaning.

With a commissioned jazz-inflected score by MacArthur Foundation “Genius” fellow Jason Moran and shifting lighting design by Jim Campbell, famous for his light sculptures and installations, “The Collective Agreement” through the metaphor of movement proposes the importance of balancing personal ego with recognition of the essential oneness of humankind. Heady stuff, perhaps, but visually mesmerizing.

King, born in Georgia in 1952 to civil rights activist parents, trained at New York City’s famed School of American Ballet. Early on, he set aside a performing career to focus on teaching and choreography. He founded his own company, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, in San Francisco when he was 30.

It has since toured the world, earning plaudits for the passionate commitment of its dancers and for King’s unique ability to inflect his classical ballet roots in fresh, innovative ways that speak to his deeply humanistic values. His choreography has been labelled a blend of classical and contemporary, but King finds such attempts at categorization simplistic and reductive.

“Ballet can be manipulated into tons of different forms,” King explained.

A notable feature of King’s overall approach to movement is the search for what is essential and authentic. King expects dancers who perform his choreography to dig deep and find and express their own truth within it. And, just as he takes great care about music — Muir says King is the only choreographer she knows of who routinely seeks advice from a musicologist — he expects dancers to immerse themselves within it, not just scamper across the top of it.

King’s work is danced by many companies other than his own, from the Royal Swedish Ballet to Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and Charlotte Ballet. It was as artistic director of the latter company that Toronto-born Muir became familiar with King’s work. When she knew she’d be moving to the National Ballet Muir phoned King to ask if he’d like to work with the company.

“If I recall correctly,” said Muir, “he was like ‘I’ve been waiting for your call.’ I think he knew that with my taste and my having curated several of his works in Charlotte, this would happen.”

They talked of the possibility of a new work but, with a tight calendar, it proved more practical to start with an existing ballet that could be accommodated within a shorter rehearsal period.

“The Collective Agreement” was commissioned by San Francisco Ballet as part of “Unbound,” the company’s audaciously ambitious and much applauded spring 2018 festival of new works, 12 in all arranged in four programs spread over almost three weeks.

“One of the many things I admire about Alonzo is the variety of his work over the years,” said Muir. “We looked at three or four possibilities from very different periods in his choreographic career and finally he just came back and said, ‘I think this is the right one.’ I suspect after four years he’s excited to revisit it.”

Two revivals comprise the balance of the program.

Spanish-born choreographer Vanesa Garcia-Ribala Montoya’s “Crepuscular,” to Chopin music, was initially commissioned during the pandemic as part of the National Ballet’s virtual season. It never made it online because a public health lockdown drove the dancers from the studio. “Crepuscular,” an exploration of the mystical associations of the hours of darkness, finally received a live-stage premiere in August 2021 as part of the National Ballet’s open-air “Sharing the Stage” presentation at Harbourfront Centre’s Concert Stage.

Even then, Montoya, a principal dancer with Montreal’s Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, felt it prudent to choreograph in a way that limited close contact among her fully vaccinated, tested-twice-weekly eight-member cast. Now, although COVID is still a concern, Montoya has felt emboldened to make appropriate adjustments to her choreography in reworking “Crepuscular” for a big, theatrically lit indoor stage.

Scottish-born Kenneth MacMillan, who died almost 30 years ago at age 62, is probably most familiar to National Ballet audiences as the choreographer of the ever popular ragtime romp “Elite Syncopations,” revived by the company as recently as last March, Far less familiar locally is “Concerto,” a work MacMillan made in 1966 for Deutsche Oper Berlin.

It’s set to Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major,” written in 1957 as a 19th birthday present for the composer’s second son, Maxim. The jaunty outer movements sandwich an achingly lovely and romantic andante. “Concerto” joined the National Ballet’s repertoire in 1987 but has not been seen here since 1990, an inexcusable oversight we must be grateful to Muir for correcting.

“I love it,” said Muir. “It’s so pure as a celebration of the classical technique, but it’s also got a sense of humour. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. Then, in the middle slow movement you have this sublime poetic pas de deux.”

Since “Concerto” is entirely new to the current company, Muir, an expert in staging ballets, did the preliminary work of teaching the steps before Julie Lincoln, a seasoned MacMillan répétiteur, arrived from Britain to refine the details.

Working directly with the dancers in the studio has quickly become a hallmark of Muir’s still evolving artistic directorship. Despite her administrative responsibilities, she endeavours to teach company class twice a week and, since no two dancers are alike, to assess how best to support each member’s artistic development.

It’s something Alonzo King strives to achieve with his own company and appreciates in Muir.

“I’m impressed with everything about Hope,” said King. “Her total commitment to the artistic growth of the dancers; that is what is called real care.”

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