Musician Bernie Krause and co-composer Richard Blackford are collaborating with Alonzo King on a new ballet, choreographed by King and set to an original composition by Krause and Blackford that incorporates natural soundscapes.
Born in 1938, Krause is the founder of Wild Sanctuary, an organization dedicated to recording and archiving natural soundscapes. He is a musician, author, composer, and bio-acoustician, who coined the term “biophony,” the notion that each creature has a niche sound—a bandwidth—that gives it the aural space to communicate. Richard Blackford’s music has been broadcast and featured in festivals all over the world. He and Krause previously collaborated on The Great Animal Orchestra, commissioned by the Cheltenham Festival for a July 2014 premiere. For this project with LINES, Krause, Blackford, and King will work together to define the relationship among the soundscapes, the composition, and the dancers.
Founded in 1982, Alonzo King LINES Ballet is a San Francisco-based dance company that supports King in choreographing works of illuminating beauty and sharing them with the widest possible audience. One of the pre-eminent contemporary ballet choreographers in the world, King attracts a diverse range of artistic collaborators. The ballet will premiere at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in May 2015 and become part of LINES’s touring repertoire.