Getting back to the barre
Alonzo King Lines Dance Center reopens for the first time since start of pandemic
The day after the holiday weekend, the Federal Building on Mission and Seventh streets was closed, its garbagestrewn sidewalks abandoned to the shouts and groans of the city’s dispossessed, while up above, on the fifth floor of the old Odd Fellows Building next door, subtler sounds reemerged. A dancer spritzed hair spray to smooth a sleek bun. Fuzzy music leaked from earbuds. Barres creaked and heavy rhythmic breathing sounded from bodies stretching on the floor.
Adji Cissoko, a dancer with Alonzo King Lines Ballet, hurried into the room. “I’ve been waiting for this moment!” she said with her fists balled in expectation.
Finally, piano music poured from the speakers, while dancers gently bent their knees and pointed their toes in a regimen of plies and tendus to kick off the first Lines Dance Center class held since the pandemic began more than a year ago.
Attendees of this opentothepublic Advanced/Professional Level Ballet class ranged from teens to the tenderly graying. Katie Burville, 18, had stepped inside the Dance Center just once before, when she auditioned for the Lines Trainee Program in early 2019. Hailing from Waunakee, Wis., she had come out with a dream and made the cut — then got the news that COVID19 had moved all dance classes online. So this past year she trained in her family’s Wisconsin home over the internet from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., learning Lines Ballet repertory, and staying in shape with Gyrotonics.
On Monday, July 5, she was one of the first to claim a place at the barre. “I’m finally going to meet everyone,” she said.
Tai Lum was just as astonished to be back in the Dance Center, even though, as he said, “I grew up dancing at Lines.” At 18 years old and part of the Teens at Lines program, Lum trained in his parents’ San Francisco backyard during the past year via his online classes with the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts and ODC’s Dance Jam. He even headed (masked) to public plazas and Golden Gate Park on weekends to perform improvisations in public — “It helped me keep the love of dance alive,” he said. But nothing compared to the sweaty smell of the studio.
“To finally be back in the building,” he said, pausing as though overwhelmed, “it has a certain aura. All the memories come flooding back.”
The return of bodies to the Dance Center will be not a flood at first but a trickle. As Lines’ director of education Kate Pfaff explained, “We’re starting out measured and cautious.” Offering 15 classes in its first week of reopening, the center will gradually add more until it ramps back to its prepandemic normal of 65 classes a
week.
Soon, Jazz and Modern will return to the Dance Center, and Beginning Ballet. By midAugust, companies and community groups should be able to rent space again, and School of the Arts and Lines Ballet’s Bachelor of Fine Arts students are scheduled to return. If all goes well, by fall the center, a major hub of Bay Area dance for 32 years, will once again resound with flamenco castanet clicks and belly dance belt jangles.
But on Monday, only a simple waltz played, and Frank Willey, who has lived in San Francisco since 1985, prepared his ankles to do pas de cheval into a fifthposition releve balance.
“I’m a little bit nervous. My adrenaline’s up,” he admitted. “I’ve had dreams I’m back in the studio dancing, and some are good, some are nightmares.”
Judging from the peaceful closing of his eyes as he rose tiptoe with arms overhead, the reality Monday was feeling like a good dream.