Review: Alonzo King LINES Ballet performing Legacy & Ode to Alice Coltrane, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, April 11 – 19, 2026

A roar rises as the audience stands in exaltation of the artists of Alonzo King LINES Ballet (LINES). The 2026 Spring Season double-bill includes the world premiere of LEGACY, a collaboration with Award-winning musician and composer Esperanza Spalding, followed by the reprise of Ode to Alice Coltrane, which has captivated audiences across the U.S. and Europe since its premiere in 2024.

Writing about LINES forces one to find new superlatives in an effort to meet the inventiveness of the movement and the transcendence of the performance experience.  Choreographer, Artistic Director, and Co-Founder Alonzo King is a master of contemporary ballet, and as such, he attracts the highest caliber of collaborators.  The dancers, composers, musicians, and designers who comprise the LINES creative team consistently expand the envelop of what is, crafting new worlds and transporting us to them. 

For this home season at San Francisco’s Blue Shield of California Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, LEGACY showcases Spalding performing her unique vocal jazz stylings and rhythmic bass work from the downstage corner of the stage. 

Alonzo King LINES Ballet with musician eseranza spalding - Dancer Maël Amatoul - Spalding costumes by Colleen Quen, all other cosumte by Robert Rosenwasser - © Chris Hardy

The score features 16 emotionally expressive original compositions which inspire movement to match.   As if listening and responding to an inner voice, each dancer’s movement is their own, though they stop and gather to marvel at another’s virtuosic solo.  Shafts of clear light cut through the atmospheric haze. Glazing glistening bare torsos and igniting the iridescence and sparkle of Robert Rosenwasser’s costume pieces, lighting designer Alexander V. Nichols directs our focus, highlighting the artists against tinted skies.   

Lyrics speak of “down-in-my-bone home,” as dancers stretch up from the balls of their feet, expanding skyward, before sinking to compact crouches, their knees jutting up past their ears.  Pacing varies, a quick series of chaîne turns may lead to a languid fan kick, requiring extraordinary balance, made more difficult for the awkward way the leg is bent in opposition to the trajectory. As Spalding sings of lineage, a trio of dancers flops forward at the waist with elbows flapping out from shoulders like truncated wings. Maintaining their stoop, they progress like a flock of grazing cranes.

The dancers’ relationship to the floor is intriguing. In “Give Thanks,” Lorris Eichinger extends his long form horizontally across the stage in a lunge so low, that when threading his arm under his forward bent knee, his cheek seems to kiss the floor.

Gradually the beaded-fringe and sequined pants and skirts disappear. Performers return to the stage in high-style swimwear (black dance briefs for the men and backless strapless bateau-necked leotards on the women).  A fascinating sequence follows, as dancers swim a front-crawl stroke upon the stage.  Hovering their upper bodies just over the floor, they swing an arcing arm forward and then press into their leading hand to pull their trailing bodies along in a surprisingly gracefully aquatic crossing.    

Alonzo King LINES Ballet - LEGACY - Mikal Gilbert and company © Chris Hardy

While the collective is strong, true partnering is fleeting, so the entangling duet “Through Two Not Two,” featuring Adji Cissoko and Shuaib Elhassan, is thrilling.  Steeped in mutual trust, their long-time partnership invites a risk-taking and inventive exploration of codependence. Initially, Cissoko climbs upon and stands on Elhassan’s splayed thighs as he squats.   Later, he carries her soaring form atop his extended arms. Finally, Cissoko flings her body backward into Elhassan’s chest. Wrapping her legs behind his back, she clings to him as if she is his shield.  They have become one.

Alonzo King LINES Ballet - LEGACY - Dancers Adji Cissoko and Shuaib Elhassan © Chris Hardy

Clannish groups of four and five split the stage, each offering and then observing variations from the opposing force, before coming together in an ode to shared cultural traditions. As Spalding sings of the “immeasurable immensity of your inheritance,” joining hands, the company of nine dancers forms a serpentine line, creating a fleeting tableau of wedding dancers.

Cissoko, Marusya Madubuko and Tatum Quiñónez close the work directing their attention, and ours, to their magnificent musical partner, whose melodic lyrics remind us how sweet it is to live again.  This collaboration with Spalding feels integrated at the deepest levels, as if the music grows from the dance and in return the dance grows from the music. Both are greater for the other’s participation.

Following Spalding’s triumph, it is a fitting counterpoint that Ode to Alice Coltrane is shaped by the music of another amazing female American experimental composer and musician singer, the late great Alice Coltrane, who composed much of her most famous work in the 1970’s & 1980’s.  The 15 varied jazz tracks, featuring harp and organ and buzzy electronic manipulations, lend the dance piece a new age spiritual vibe. Thanks to King’s choreographic stylings and Seah Johnson’s lighting, Ode to Alice Coltrane is sensual, playful, reverential and beautiful from start to finish.

The set features a black backdrop with angular openings and a light-filled drop. The openings’ aperture height adjusts to match the mood of each song, shifting seamlessly over time. As we begin, light peaks through low to the ground rectangles, like below-street basement windows.  Their form echoes the angular shapes of the dancers who crawl, on stiff arms and knees, purposefully across the stage. As the piece develops, the tops of the windows rise to create doorways and later tall archways through which golden beams of light streak, as dancing spirits soar.  

Ode to Alice Coltrane is rich in kinetic brilliance.  I marvel at the looseness of Maël Amatou’s arms as he whips them outward allowing them to roll like ribbons in the wind. Madubuko’s assured balances, the hang time of Mikal Gilbert’s leaps, and the swift spiraling pirouettes of Joshua Francique, leave awe in their path. Ensemble sections evoke varied interpretations in me. I see fish darting in a sparkling sea, devotees making divine offerings in a vaulting temple, and dancers striking satirical poses in a ballet company class. Surrounded by dashing figures but singular in purpose, soloist Theo Duff-Grant ascends with expansive joy and steadfast belief in the crescendo to the glory of a higher plane, as the curtain falls on the finale, titled “Going Home.” 

Alonzo King LINES Ballet - Ode to Alice Coltrane - Dancer Mikal Gilbert and LINES company - © Chris Hardy

I wish I could say go buy a ticket for next weekend’s Alonzo King LINES Ballet performance, but this run was sold-out before the curtain rose.  Note to self: Buy early, you won’t regret it.

Review by Jen Norris, published April 15, 2026