Multi-ethnic ballet

Lines Ballet (U.S.). Artistic director and choreographer Alonzo King. "Irregular Pearl": Music by Vivaldi, Corelli, Marin Marais, Domenico Scarlatti, Sainte Colombe and others. "Rasa": Music by Zakir Hussain. Costume design by Robert Rosenwasser and Colleen Quen. Lighting design by Alain Lortie. Jerusalem Theater, Israel Festival (June 6).

It was a pleasure to see the dancers and the original choreography of the Lines Ballet. The first thing that caught the eye was the composition of the eight-member troupe: mostly men, with a prominent African-American representation. This troupe's style is based on classic ballet open to assimilation and enrichment from other cultures.

"Irregular Pearl" is a meeting between Baroque music and classical ballet, with an emphasis on the dancers' movement. This is an abstract and brilliant dance, full of soul, vibrant but not emotional. The long lines of ballet, with its variety of pirouettes, combine wonderfully with the dancers' flexible torsos, and the movements flow past the ends of their long limbs.

This combination gives rise to a plethora of creative solutions and creates a contemporary ballet that is "different," neither formalistic nor violent like that of Bill Forsythe, but also not romantic and narrative. Rather, this is a ballet that offers itself as a means of expression - the body meeting the music - and stresses, without coercion, the energetic differences between the dancers with their various backgrounds.

One tall, slim ballerina has precise, clear movements; another dancer's movements are more wild and kicking. Both dance on their toes, maintaining their knees at the same angle, torsos held erect as they twist and turn. One of the African-American dancers stood out with his long limbs and fascinating stage presence.

The costumes were a delicate gray fabric, and the dancers' skin, most of it exposed, was an ornament that drew attention to their bodies.

"Rasa" is a meeting between ballet and Indian music. King seems to be taking his time, and is in no hurry to part from ballet. In the first part of the piece, it seems as if the same dance materials, with their arabesques and twirling etudes, could have been born of western music.

But as the dance goes on, the influence of the Indian music on its rhythms washes over it. The dancers, as if they can no longer resist its hypnotic force, are one by one carried away, and they use their technical skills to show what the music evokes for them.

This is not Indian dance with small movements, but a demonstration of the masterful and universal ability of the dancer's body to hold a dialogue with impulses, in tension and counterpoint to the music.

It is interesting to see how every one of the dancers brings his own ethnic recollection and reacts differently to the music. Some of the dance sequences are intriguing, and they are at their best in a solo or duet, but sometimes get lost in a more complex choreographic setting.