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Lines’ fall season comprised three numbers: String Quartet; Pas de Deux and Pharoah Sanders World Premiere.

Pharaoh Sanders walks the very deliberate pace of an elder, adding as adornment dark glasses and shoes with metallic strips in front, his solid frame covered by a colorful dashiki. The music emanating from his glittering instrument can be playful, wistful, wispy and low, gutteral and earthy, the interplay and bridges between providing much of his aural fascination. He played a solo after intermission before improvising for the third piece. We were told he never played the same variations.

Excepting Corey Scott-Gilbert, the Lines dancers currently are mid-height; one or two of the men in the ten dancers listed are slightly shorter; each member could be chiseled they are so finely tuned physically and move so coherently within their choreographic assignments. In a rare few minutes at the end of the program, the dancers sat in a line before the curtain, talking about themselves, their goals and how it felt to work with King.

Even with the Maffre-Scott-Gilbert pas de deux, a piece premiered at the Venice Biennale, I found myself more engrossed with the dancers than the dances' arc, repeating King’s style of broad torso vibrato, spectacular male ensemble passages,labyrinthine movements in pas de deux. The pas de deux highlighted Maffre’s angular capacities and the magnificent reach of Scott-Gilbert; their excitement rose less from their height than from the grand full use of their stature. Merely standing on stage, they create excitement.

One Lines dancer particularly intriguing is Ashley Jackson, now in her third season with Lines. Her line is most uncluttered, the most diagrammatically correct seen in a long time. In all her assignments she enables herself to step aside so the classic tradition emerges. At the height of her technique, I hope she is given the opportunity to dance some of the fiendishly difficult variations from Paquita, La Bayadere or another traditional war horse. I’d like to be there in the cheering audience.

King eschews plot, but does incorporate vast themes, such as Migration, in his titles. He currently works with a second, almost third generation of dancers; most of his first round of amazing exponents have retired, now teaching or otherwise occupied. With a school and academic affiliation, King's vision has become quite an enterprise. Adding to this local substantial record, before the curtain rose, executive director Ann Marie Nemanich informed the audience King will create a work for the Ballets de Monte Carlo for its 2009 celebration of the centennial of the Ballet Russe opening in Paris.