Aesha Ashe of Alonzo King's Lines Ballet.

Seeing Alonzo King's Lines Ballet at EJ Thomas in Akron involves a drive, but we consider the trip highly worthwhile. We've long complained about the dearth of ballet performances in Northeast Ohio. We're always wishing and waiting for a chance to see some good, contemporary ballet, so we consider a 45-minute drive a small price to pay for the choreographer and his company. An aspect of Lines Ballet that we find particularly interesting is the way that King has developed ballet technique, which he calls "the science of movement," to allow it to serve contemporary themes and African as well as European musical forms.

Ballet and African dance are usually described in terms of their contrasts. Ballet's amazingly strong, supple and articulate legs and feet are topped by what was, historically speaking, a stiffly corseted and relatively inarticulate trunk. African dance is typically built around a very articulate and expressive trunk with hips, shoulders and heads capable of moving in complex polyrhythms, while hands and feet are used as percussion instruments as much as for line; the feet are notably flat and inarticulate compared to the ballet dancer's pointes. King's work returns repeatedly to the problems and opportunities involved in synthesizing African dance and ballet, a project that we have long seen as vitally important to the future of ballet.

The nine-member company's repertoire at EJ Thomas features some of King's most recent works, which nicely illustrate Lines' explorations of contemporary and particularly African themes, music and movement.

The Moroccan Project (2005) is a suite of 15 dances set to a commissioned score by three Moroccan-born composer/performers, all frequent collaborators with King. The choreography sometimes responds literally to the materials of its musical score, as when a dancer reclines during a lullaby, and sometimes it evokes North African animals and people traversing the stage in winding paths. Lighting divides the stage into a dimly lit upstage area and a brightly lit downstage with the dancers in the two areas performing contrasting movements.

Critical response to The Moroccan Project has been unanimous in praise of the "splendid" musicians and the company's "glamorous" dancers (Allan Ulrich, Voice of Dance) but unable to agree on the strengths or weaknesses of the choreography. Does, for instance, the piece ultimately fail for lack of movement invention, as Allan Ulrich says, or is it characterized by an abundance of movement invention, as Joy Goodwin writes in the New York Sun?

Next comes Following the Subtle Current Upstream, a work that was originally premiered on the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2000 and later on Lines in 2006. Set to African-themed music, it is King's meditation on the yogic concept of returning to our origins by following the subtle current in our spines to a place of bliss.

Also on the program is the pas de deux from migration (2006), King's exploration of evolution and the bridge between animals and humans. It's set to a commissioned score by Miguel Frasconi, composer and performer of new exploratory world music and the winner of a 1997 Isadora Duncan Dance Award (for another collaboration with King), and Leslie Stuck, another frequent collaborator.