Alonzo King LINES Ballet Returning to The Harris Theater, 3/4-5

San Francisco-based Alonzo King LINES Ballet, led by visionary Founder and Artistic Director Alonzo King, will present two alternate programs, both Chicago debuts, at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Wednesday, March 4 at 6:00PM as part of the Theater's popular Eat + Drink to the Beat series and Thursday, March 5 at 7:30PM in a full-length evening performance.

Wednesday's performance is the first appearance for LINES Ballet in the Eat + Drink to the Beat series. Concerto for Two Violins, choreographed to Bach's concerto in D Minor (utilized famously by George Balanchine in 1941), is a sleek and sharp salute to ballet's past while marking the continued evolution of neoclassicism. Shostakovich is King's latest work set to four Shostakovich string quartets. The program runs just under an hour and, as with all Eat + Drink to the Beat performances, some of Chicago's best food trucks will be parked on Lower Randolph selling after work bites that patrons are welcome to bring into the theater with them. Harris Theater concessions will also feature specialty cocktails for purchase.

A post-performance reception for all patrons attending the March 4 performance will take place in the Harris lobby. Alonzo King and the dancers of LINES Ballet will engage with patrons, including over 100 beneficiaries of the Theater's Access Tickets Program from After School Matters, The Chicago Academy for the Arts, and The Chicago High School for the Arts.

Thursday night's performance features an original score performed live by Grammy Award-winning double bassist Edgar Meyer along with violinist Rob Moose and cellist Gabriel Cabezas. Created for LINES Ballet's 30th anniversary, Meyer premiered in April 2013 at the Yerba Buena Center of the Arts Theater in San Francisco. The original music, composed by Meyer, mixes classical and jazz for cello, violin, double bass, and piano to complement King's choreography with a backdrop of synchronized water created by Academy Award-winning designer Jim Doyle. The Thursday program also includes King's intricate Writing Ground, inspired by the poetry of National Book Award-winning author Colum McCann. Commissioned in 2010 by Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, Writing Ground incorporates an eclectic variety of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Tibetan Buddhist music.

"The Harris is among the best stages of the world. When you walk into the space, you are inspired," said Alonzo King regarding the upcoming Chicago performances.

The company will also participate in several community engagement activities while in Chicago. On Monday, March 2, LINES Ballet will offer a workshop for Chicago Academy for the Arts, in which students will learn excerpts of Alonzo King's choreography. A pre-performance artist talk will take place on March 4 for high school students from After School Matters. A post-performance artist conversation with Alonzo King and Edgar Meyer will take place on stage immediately following the March 5 performance. All audience members are welcome to participate in this conversation.

All tickets for the March 4 Eat + Drink to the Beat performance are $5 and tickets for the March 5 evening performance are $10-$95, available at HarrisTheaterChicago.org or by calling the Box Office at 312.334.7777.

The March 4 Eat + Drink to the Beat performance is made possible thanks to generous support from Ricardo and Laura Rosencranz, Lead Sponsor. The March 5 presentation of Alonzo King LINES Ballet is made possible thanks to generous support from Ariel Investments, Opening Night Sponsor. Additional support to help underwrite the Community Engagement programming was generously provided by an Anonymous donor.

About Alonzo King LINES Ballet
Alonzo King LINES Ballet is a celebrated contemporary ballet company that has been guided since 1982 by the choreographer Alonzo King. Collaborating with noted composers, musicians, and visual artists from around the world, King creates works that draw on a diverse set of deeply rooted cultural traditions, imbuing classical ballet with new expressive potential. King understands ballet as a science-founded on universal, geometric principles of energy and evolution-and continues to develop a new language of movement from its classical forms and techniques. King's visionary choreography, brought to life by the extraordinary LINES Ballet dancers, is renowned for connecting audiences to a profound sense of shared humanity.

The term LINES alludes to all that is visible in the phenomenal world. There is nothing that is made or formed without line. "Straight" and "circle" encompass all that we see. Whatever can be seen is formed by lines. In mathematics it is a straight or curved continuous extent of length without breadth. Lines are in our fingerprints, the shapes of our bodies, constellations, geometry. It implies genealogical connection, progeny and spoken word. It marks the starting point and finish. It addresses direction, communication, and design. A line of thought. A boundary or eternity. A melodic line. The equator. From vibration or dot to dot it is the visible organization of what we see.

About Alonzo King
Alonzo King has been called a visionary choreographer who is altering the way we look at ballet. He has works in the repertories of the Royal Swedish Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet, Ballet Bejart, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, Joffrey Ballet, Alvin Ailey, Hong Kong Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. He has worked extensively in opera, television, and film. Known for collaborations, seminal works include People of the Forest (2001), choreographed with Baka artists from Central African Republic, and Long River High Sky (2007), with China's Shaolin Monks. He has collaborated with actor Danny Glover, legendary jazz saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, Hamza al Din, Pawel Szymanski, Jason Moran, and tabla master Zakir Hussain. Renowned for his skill as a teacher, King has been guest ballet master for dance companies around the globe. In 2012 King was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Corps de Ballet International Teacher Conference.

About Edgar Meyer
In demand as both a performer and a composer, Edgar Meyer has formed a role in the music world unlike any other. Hailed by the New Yorker as "the most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively unchronicled history of his instrument," Meyer's unparalleled technique and musicianship in combination with his gift for composition have brought him to the fore, where he is appreciated by a vast, varied audience. His uniqueness in the field was recognized by a MacArthur Award in 2002.

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