Alonzo King, a force and an institution in the Bay Area for decades, is a knotty choreographer. The movement is taut, leggy, and often depends on two people levered against each other for any propulsion to occur. But motion may be less the point than the gorgeous sculptural tangling and untangling. Eventually one longs for release—for these uncommonly handsome dancers to let loose in space or bound into the air or soften into a deep, slow stretch. Where the tone does shift is in the dance’s variable relationship to the music. King does his best work to commissioned scores by a stable of renowned composers in non-classical modes: Hindustani tablaist Zakir Hussain, saxophone spiritualist Pharoah Sanders, and, most often, jazz pianist-composer Jason Moran, to whom he has turned for the evening-length Deep River. Honey-voiced Lisa Fischer joins Moran for riffs on spirituals, among other heart-melting sources. The dancers ride above the music, then dive into the rhythmic stream. —Apollinaire Scherr