Sax and Dancing

Related Content

• Sunday at Hardly Strictly: Gomez, Justin Townes Earle, and Bela Fleck Help Fuel the Good Vibes
  October 3, 2011
• You Are My Shiny Star
  April 20, 2011
• Psycho Beach Party, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Manuok and Pez's Sticker Art
  August 6, 2010
• Stern Grove Festival 2011: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Neko Case, the Dodos, the English Beat, and More
  May 2, 2011
• San Francisco Ballet Dancer Beats Down Mugger in BART Brawl
  August 5, 2010

More About

• Pharoah Sanders
• Zakir Hussain
• Muriel Maffre
• Dance
• Ballet

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Leaving behind the staid tropes and easy grace that have been fodder for traditional ballet companies for decades, choreographer Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet creates pieces that resound with a nearly spiritual tenor. King and ensemble delve into global themes, collaborating with fascinating people (monks, pygmies, and world-class musicians, to name a few) to produce works that are both intimate and expansive. This experimental penchant feeds into King’s latest partnership with saxophonist and jazz great Pharoah Sanders, whose polyrhythms and syncopated anarchy are the perfect fit for an ensemble that has danced to the beats of tabla luminary Zakir Hussain and the hypnotic warble of Nubian oud virtuoso Hamza El Din. So while you'll get the requisite balletic beauty, the dancers' movements are more in keeping with the ever-changing rhythms of bodies in motion rather than the rigid precision that might be expected of the form. Sanders' dissonant cadences are used to particularly sublime effect in a guest duet with Muriel Maffre, the former prima ballerina of the San Francisco Ballet.
Oct. 17-26, 8 p.m., 2008