Alonzo King Lines Ballet opened a run at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday with a 2013 work by Mr. King, “Concerto for Two Violins.” It is set to a Bach score that for many dance lovers, especially in New York, is indelibly associated with George Balanchine’s 1941 masterpiece “Concerto Barocco.” The inevitable contrast is unsurprisingly cruel. The more interesting and favorable comparison is between Mr. King’s “Concerto” and the rest of his program.
Clarity of structure is not normally Mr. King’s strong suit, but his attention to Bach’s design gives this dance a firmer shape. As in the Balanchine, two dancers often mirror the back and forth of the two violins. When those two dancers are the majestic, towering Adji Cissoko and Courtney Henry, the effect is especially striking. (Lines Ballet dancers always look fabulous.) Elsewhere, Mr. King’s penchant for making a tidy line of dancers explode into multiplicity offers a less imitative but still potent partner for Bach’s organization of forces.
In the central largo movement, Mr. King doubles down with a double duet. The two couples tangle, but they keep collapsing. The Balanchinian daisy chains are oddly wilted and the displays of emotion rather soggy. With all of its languorously stretching arms and legs and little footwork, with the way both the dancers and the dance keep turning and twisting in one direction and then the other, Mr. King’s aesthetic isn’t baroque, classical or neo-classical. It’s mannerist.
In a highly episodic work like “Writing Ground” (2010), which is composed of 14 sections of early sacred music (Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist), the looping sameness of the choreographic calligraphy is cumulatively more dulling. Rapidly windmilling arms can’t rev up a dance without much of a motor.
“Writing Ground” is more imagistic than “Concerto.” Along with the crumpling and spinning, dancers crawl and struggle and cling to one another. The Middle Eastern tinge in some of the music brings out a distinctive character in Mr. King’s vocabulary, and in solos for the captivating Michael Montgomery and the sensitive Madeline DeVries, who mimes writing on the ground, the free rhythm suggests a person thinking. Mr. King likes to compare his choreography with thought. But the final mad scene in which Kara Wilkes is carried around by four men is, like much of Mr. King’s work, full of ideas better realized in the work of other choreographers.
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