By Octavio Roca
10 April 2000

It takes two to tango, but it took just one man to revitalize this torrid Argentine dance form and take it once again all around the world. His name was Astor Piazzolla, and in our time, his music has proved both popular and full of surprises for dancers and audiences alike.

Now comes Alonzo King with the latest in a long line of Piazzolla ballets. The first thing to say about King's new ``Tango,'' which had its world premiere at Yerba Buena on Friday night, is that it brought out the best and most luminous qualities of his extraordinary Lines Contemporary Ballet.

Can the San Francisco choreographer add anything new to the growing tango legacy? That is not an easy task. I remember the Berlin Ballet dancing to Piazzolla about 20 years ago, and since that time the parade of tango onstage has not stopped: the Stuttgart Ballet, Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Julio Bocca's Ballet Argentino, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, plus the perennial ``Tango Argentino'' and ``Forever Tango'' tours and the influential work of Luis Bravo, Graciela Daniele and others. What does King bring to the party? His own distinctive style, as it turns out.

``Tango'' was unveiled alongside ``Sea Green and Blue Already Rising,'' an intriguing new piece by the Foundry, a dance collective founded by Alex Ketley and Christian Burns. Also on view were King's new ``In to Get Out'' and a revival of his 1998 ``Tarab.'' Taken as a whole, this Lines program signaled the re turn of a company on the move: hip and hot, looking good and dancing deliciously on the edge.

On its own, ``Tango'' was intriguing in what it did not do. In four movements set to some of the late Piazzolla's best-known recordings, King seldom made use of the tango's actual syntax but rather found a unique way to make the music his own. Like Taylor in his exhilarating ``Piazzolla Caldera,'' King made his ``Tango'' work for the style and bodies of his dancers. The feeling of anticipation in a duet, the teasing use of pointe work and the electrifying tension of attraction and repulsion -- all these elements of many King dances came together to make ``Tango'' a gripping experience.

Frantic and balletic, even jazzy in its impulse, ``Tango'' replaced the real tango's syncopated battement with an on-the-beat excitement that had the crowd cheering. The company's leggy women with their impossibly stretched lines, the densely packed men bursting with energy, step combinations designed to suggest rather than illustrate the possibilities of desire: These were the images ``Tango'' left behind.

Xavier Ferla's swagger in the opening ``Escualo,'' but also Summer Lee Rhatigan in ``Francacapa,'' Ketley in ``Contrabajisimo'' and the entire company in the languid ``Milonga del Angel'' made for an exhilarating spectacle.

And so with the rest of the pro gram. The Foundry's ``Sea Green and Blue Already Rising'' juxtaposed barely intelligible texts and evocative video images, dehumanizing fragments all, with a heartbreaking humanity that was a wonder to behold. Burns and Ketley's episodic choreography was marked by recurring gestures and created an aleatory impression despite clear, if dreamlike, logic.

Derek Powell's music for ``Sea Green'' was both unsettling and gentle, recalling the piano works of Federico Mompou. Gregory Dawson, who has never danced better, was joined by Marina Hotchkiss, Maurya Kerr and Rhatigan in this new dance, which promises to become a Lines staple.

So does ``In to Get Out,'' a brief and sexy King ballet set to a recording of Somei Satoh's chamber ``Toki No Mon.'' It is discreet and distinctively American, like much of King's choreography for men. And it will not shock the Puritans as Vladimir Anguelov's strikingly original, all- male ``Impetuous'' for San Francisco Ballet did recently. But ``In to Get Out'' still worked on Friday, danced splendidly by Ferla, Ketley, Burns and Brian Chung. And, like both ``Tango'' and ``Sea Green,'' it suggested a life that could go on long after the curtain's fall.