]If you’ve ever seen Adji Cissoko dance, you know it feels like a conversation, something happening in real time between her and the music. It’s not just that she moves with it, but that she meets it, responds to it, exists inside it.

That relationship becomes especially clear when she performs with Esperanza Spalding, where the connection between sound and movement is constantly shifting.

“There’s a passage where I cross from stage right to stage left,” she says. “Each time, there’s a completely different feeling between the two of us in how we react. When she plays slower, it doesn’t mean I also want to be slow. I might decide, ‘No—I’m going to play above you and be fast.’ But we’re still together, listening and reacting… it really feels like we are speaking.”

The program, which pairs the Spalding collaboration LEGACY with Ode to Alice Coltrane and Grace: The Music of Duke Ellington, is built on that kind of responsiveness.

The choreography is exacting, rehearsed to the point where it becomes internal rather than imposed—something Cissoko describes as “like a language.” There are, as she puts it, “very specific steps,” but once they’re fully embodied, they can stretch and shift without losing structure.

That approach has long been part of how Alonzo King LINES Ballet works. Even without live music, dancers are trained to move in relationship to one another rather than rely strictly on counts. What’s different here is that the listening expands outward, toward the music itself as it’s being shaped in real time.

“We’re all about listening. We tune into the rhythm of the group so we stay together, feel each other. We don’t have to look at each other, but we’re aware of everyone around us. Now we’re broadening that to ask: how is Esperanza playing today? What choices is she making? It’s in line with how we work, and it gives the piece even more depth.”

Lately, though, she’s not just asking those questions as a dancer.

Three months into her role as Associate Artistic Director, she’s also watching—paying attention to how her colleagues respond to those same shifts, how they interpret what they hear, what they bring to it.

“I’m not just thinking about how it feels as a dancer,” she says. “I’m also observing—how they react, how they play, how they interpret.”

That shift has changed what she notices. Where she might once have focused on her own experience, she now sees the subtle differences across the room—the way each dancer hears something slightly differently, moves with a different internal timing.

“Our minds are all slightly different,” she says. “And that’s a good thing.”

Instead of aiming for uniformity, the work leaves space for variation. Each run-through becomes less about repeating what worked and more about discovering something new within it.

“It’s not about putting something on,” she says. “It’s about being human, being true, being real—reacting in the moment.” That idea connects to something deeper in Cissoko’s life.

“Esperanza talks about home and what that means,” she says. “And I go back to my roots and what I know about my family.”

Cissoko was born and raised in Munich, but her father is from Senegal, and her family traces back generations of West African storytellers and musicians.

“I come from a family of Jeliw—storytellers. In West Africa, everyone recognizes my last name because it’s 72 generations of storytellers who play the kora.”

The kora, a 21-string instrument central to that tradition, represents more than music. It carries history, memory, and lineage.

“I can show you,” she says, gesturing behind her to a large, rounded instrument with a long wooden neck. “That one there—it’s been in my family for generations. My dad plays it, my cousins play it, and everyone before them.”

For her, the instrument holds a deeper responsibility.

“Passing on culture, history, lineage, that brings a sense of responsibility to my family, to my ancestors. Not to take anything lightly. Everything I do, I want to give it intention. That’s what storytelling is.”

That sense of legacy carries directly into Ode to Alice Coltrane, where the work shifts from dialogue into something more internal.

Set to Coltrane’s music, the piece unfolds less like a narrative and more like something you move through expansive, layered, deeply felt. Cissoko describes it as “deep, spiritual, nothing superficial,” something that moves across time, holding past, present, and future at once.

“It’s so complex,” she says. “You don’t want to just watch it one night. You’re going to miss a lot.”

Like her work with Spalding, she moves through that experience rather than trying to define it. “There’s a section called ‘Journey,’” she says. “It feels like we’re asking, ‘Where are we going? and the audience is going with us.”

Near the end, that question resolves into something more personal.

“There’s a section just before the end called ‘Going Home,’” she says. It’s here that she steps into a solo that unfolds in two parts—beginning slowly, almost delicately, before building into something far more demanding. “You’re already exhausted,” she says. “But you have to push through—not shy away.”

That moment when the body wants to pull back, but doesn’t, is where something opens. “If you do that,” she says, “you really get to freedom, peace, ease.” For her, that progression reflects something larger. “Sometimes you have to go through the hard phases,” she says, “because you know in the end you’ll get somewhere.”

Like everything else in the program, it isn’t something the audience is meant to decode. “We don’t want people to feel like they have to ‘get it,’” she says. “Just sit, experience it, and see what comes up.”

What comes up often surprises people. “I hear people say, ‘That was so healing,’” she says. “And I’m like… this is incredible.” Because from the inside, she explains, it can feel small—just movement, just music—especially against everything else happening in the world.

But then something connects. “It heals me, it can heal others, and then it all makes sense.”

See Alonzo King LINES Ballet’s latest program, featuring live collaboration with Esperanza Spalding and Ode to Alice Coltrane at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, through April 19, 2026. Tickets are $46–$149.