What are we looking for in a dancer, in a dance?
The best qualities of humanity. We are looking for courage, fearlessness, humanity, kindness, compassion.
You think, “I want to be a dancer.” No. You want to be a poet so that you are taking people into ideas, not steps.
And guess what? You don’t need much technique to do that. You just have to live the idea.
Some of you are afraid, so you think and you pose and there is nothing more boring. This is a whole other world, a world of phoniness, glamour, magazines.
In dancing we want to see the truth.
There are things you admire in human beings and things you don’t like. We have those things inside of ourselves. Who are you, what you are living, what are you experiencing?
Not pictures. How will that serve? Serve the art.
A human being who is in a brutal world, who is looking for beauty; all this is seen, contained in the way that we dance, the way that the hand moves.
I see beauty and I feel better. I want to be fearless, kind. I want to be honest.
Honesty. We don’t see much honesty, do we?
Humility. Beautiful. We don’t see that much.
Sincerity. Those are the qualities we want to dance.
I am not dancing. Something is dancing me. I am receiving something.
And you don’t need much technique to dance with these qualities. But that is the important stuff.
Why am I holding back? Why am I doing pictures? I am afraid. For great art we have to be brave. When they say, “That is stupid”, you don’t care.
You don’t want to be pretty . That is a lie. You want to be beautiful. That is the truth. Pretty is a manipulation. Truth is beauty.
Alonzo King has been called a visionary choreographer, who is altering the way we look at ballet. King calls his works “thought structures” created by the manipulation of energies that exist in matter through laws, which govern the shapes and movement directions of everything that exists. Named as a choreographer with “astonishing originality” by the New York Times, Alonzo King LINES Ballet has been guided by his unique artistic vision since 1982.