Discomfort is the Thing That Binds Us

Lines Ballet begins its Fall home season Friday night, with a the revival of a popular 2015 work collaborating with Grammy award-winning singer Lisa Fischer, who was one of the artists profiled in the acclaimed documentary 20 Feet from Stardom. Choreographer Alonzo King created a piece called The Propelled Heart, that has Fischer interacting with the dancers, and the dancers singing.

There’s more information about the performances at the Lines Ballet website.

Lisa Fischer is no stranger to being on stage – she’s toured with the Rolling Stones for decades, and with many other bands that regularly sell out arenas. But this kind of dancing is new for her. “When I was little,” she says, “you did the after school ballet classes, so… from a young age you get an appreciation and a desire for just the beauty of the line, and understanding alignment within your body.  Meeting Alonzo, and actually seeing Lines at the Joyce Theatre in New York, it kind of sparked that old childhood feeling.” King says that he was immediately impressed by how game she was for the project, and wanted to be sure to protect her: “The starting point is safety, so that the artist feels comfortable, because she’s going to be taking a lot of risks, and it’s going to possibly be unfamiliar…  Maybe not unfamiliar to her dreams, but unfamiliar to work that she may or may not have been doing recently, because we wanted to create something (as usual) that’s never been created before.”