I reviewed Lines Ballet’s new “Moroccan Project” for the SF Chronicle:
“The dancers of Lines Ballet are contorted, weirdly refined, alien creatures; it’s not often you get to see them hit a groove. But the beat ruled Friday night at the Yerba Buena Center for Arts Theater during the unveiling of the company’s “Moroccan Project.” It may not be Artistic Director Alonzo King’s most choreographically ambitious undertaking, but it is probably his most rhythmically infectious.
For more than 20 years now, one of the hallmarks of King’s work has been the way he offers up his dancer’s extreme extensions and jutting joints as a lingua franca capable of conversing with any culture’s music, and it might seem like just a matter of time before he spun his globe and landed his finger on Morocco. In fact, he’s worked with musicians Bouchaib Abdelhadi and Yassir Chadly in the orchestra pit several times. What’s new is the addition of two female singers, Hafida Ghanim and Mouna Saadini, whose throaty cries and sharp warbles had the audience whooping in appreciative imitation come curtain fall.
King’s visual response to their earthy soundscape is richly atmospheric. Two bronze columns of fabric hang stage right; a gray brick wall stands to the left. The dancers wear Colleen Quen and Robert Rossenwasser’s now signature squiggly-hemmed culottes in vivid tangerine, and Axel Morgenthaler’s lighting bathes them in a desert sun so warm you can almost taste the dust.”
Click here for the whole review.
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