Alonzo King LINES Ballet reviewed

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California-based dance company Alonzo King LINES Ballet made a radiant and deeply resonant debut at Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, February 21, with their sensational program.

Above photo: Adji Cissoko in Alonzo King’s “The Collective Agreement” performed at The Soraya, on Feb. 21, 2026. Photo by Molly O’Keeffe, Luque Photography.

This company’s astonishing debut was also the culminating event of the fifth annual Jazz at Naz Festival, which is a nationally and internationally recognized celebration. Curated each February in honor of both world-class jazz and Black History Month, the program is curated under the leadership of Executive and Artistic Director Thor Steingraber.

As Steingraber noted in his program message, the Jazz at Naz Festival’s breadth spans big bands, intimate trios. and dance performances. Indeed, Thor’s expert and balanced curation has elevated the reputation of the Valley-based venue. Closing this year’s festivities with LINES Ballet’s Ode to Alice Coltrane was both an artistic triumph and a meaningful tribute to an important jazz legend.

Alonzo King, alongside creative director and co-founder Robert Rosenwasser and managing director Ruth Nott, brought to the Soraya‘s Great Hall a program of uncommon spiritual and aesthetic depth. In advance of the performance, journalist Debra Levine spoke with King, who divulged that the Coltrane family had personally approached him to create the new work. What followed became a profound passion project: Ode to Alice Coltrane, which made its World Premiere in 2024, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.

Created in collaboration with The John & Alice Coltrane Home and as part of the nationwide “Year of Alice,” the ballet paid homage to the transcendent artistry of Alice Coltrane. A singular artist, Alice Coltrane (born in Detroit, Michigan) was a pianist, harpist, composer, and spiritual visionary.

Alonzo King, who first choreographed a dance work to Coltrane’s music as far back as 1982 at the company’s inaugural performance, described having been mesmerized by her work since childhood. That lifelong reverence was palpable. Throughout the works, the dancers moved with sculptural clarity and devotional intensity, capturing Coltrane’s seamless fusion of jazz, classical, Hindu and sacred traditions into choreography that felt luminous and profoundly alive. The lighting design, with its gold-hued richness and shafts of light, formed a character of its own. Light-bulb beaded sculptural squares hung above the action, occasionally tilting to present an alternate facet. Jim Campbell is credited for the grid lighting design and the immersive light installation for The Collective Agreement.

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The evening opened with The Collective Agreement, originally commissioned by San Francisco Ballet in 2018 and later staged on the National Ballet of Canada. Set to an original score by jazz luminary and Soraya favorite Jason Moran, recorded live by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra with Moran on piano, the ballet explored the ever-shifting balance between individuality and community. King described it as “more of a neoclassical ballet,” yet in the hands of LINES’ dancers – artists uniquely attuned to his choreographic vocabulary – it felt immediate and somehow brand new.

From the intimate opening duet to the swelling ensemble passages, The Collective Agreement embodied a quest for wholeness. Following intermission, Ode to Alice Coltrane unfolded as invocation rather than narrative, giving us the sense of a spiritual offering rendered through exquisite physicality and musical sensitivity.

Together, the two works formed a program of rare cohesion and magnitude. LINES Ballet’s Soraya debut was more than a performance; it was a profound convergence of dance and jazz, intellect and spirit. The evening created a fitting and unforgettable conclusion to a festival devoted to honoring artistic excellence and cultural legacy.

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From the press release:

Alonzo King is one of America’s most decorated choreographers, and his San Francisco-based company has stood at the forefront of bold work both on the West Coast and in their global touring for more than four decades. King has been captivated by jazz legend Alice Coltrane for much of his life, and his 2024 creation to her music is not his first. For this recent piece, he chose Coltrane’s 1971 album, Journey in Satchidananda. King was drawn to Coltrane for the marrying of East and West in her music, teachings, and life, something that resonates with King in his own work. The evening opens with Alonzo King’s The Collective Agreement, which he investigates the delicate balance between the individual and the community. With an innovative light installation by Jim Campbell.

Dancers:

Maël Amatoul, Adji Cissoko, Theo Duff-Grant, Lorris Eichinger, Shuaib Elhassan, Joshua Francique, Mikal Gilbert, Anna Joy, Marusya Madubuko, Tatum Quiñónez, and Amanda Smith.

Alice Coltrane (1937–2007)

Alice Coltrane’s career can be seen as a journey from jazz prodigy to spiritual visionary, using music as a bridge between earthly improvisation and cosmic transcendence.

Alice Coltrane was an American jazz pianist, organist, harpist, composer, and spiritual leader. She began her career performing with prominent jazz musicians, including Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, whom she later married. After John Coltrane’s death in 1967, she led her own ensembles, blending jazz with classical, Indian, and spiritual influences, creating a deeply meditative, avant-garde sound. She also founded the Vedantic Center in California and became a spiritual teacher, integrating music and spirituality. Her work has been highly influential in jazz, world music, and contemporary spiritual music.