Why Jane Fonda showed up at a San Francisco ballet this weekend

Jane Fonda didn’t take the stage, but her presence during the opening week of Alonzo King Lines Ballet’s spring home season spoke volumes about the stakes of the moment.

The Oscar-winning actress and activist, known for championing the arts, was in San Francisco as the keynote speaker for the Livelong Women’s Health Summit at the Masonic on Saturday, April 18, but made a stop at the Blue Shield of California Theater at YBCA for the afternoon to catch the program. 

The double bill, which concludes Sunday, April 19, features “Legacy,” a new collaboration between Alonzo King and Grammy-winning bassist, vocalist and composer Esperanza Spalding, and the return of King’s 2024 work “Ode to Alice Coltrane,” a tribute to the legendary jazz composer, pianist and harpist.

“I’m deeply moved by what I saw,” Fonda told the Chronicle backstage after the matinee performance, visibly emotional. 

Invited by her friend Lucia Choi-Dalton, former Lines Ballet board chair, Fonda was among the audience as Choi-Dalton delivered a rallying cry.

“The arts play a crucial role generating joy and inspiring imagination about a better world. The power of that joy and creativity threatens dark forces that want to stifle the freedom we will feel here together today,” Choi-Dalton said before “Legacy” began. 

“As you experience this performance, I hope you will treasure how it makes you feel and think about how the arts are being targeted by authoritarian forces that want to skew what we experience,” she added, noting that “joy is resistance.” 

Saturday’s appearance marked the latest in a series of public shows of support for the arts by Fonda, who at 88 continues to use her platform to advocate for civil liberties, environmental causes and arts organizations at a time of heightened concern across the U.S. over political pressure, leadership shake-ups and funding uncertainty. 

On March 27, Fonda participated in the major “Artists United for Our Freedoms” demonstration in front of the Kennedy Center. She joined Bay Area folk great Joan Baez and other musicians, actors and writers to protest President Donald Trump’s complete overhaul of the national arts institution. 

“Arts are critical. That’s why arts are the first thing that authoritarians go after … because we show that there’s alternatives,” Fonda said Saturday, adding that creatives “speak across margins.”

This isn’t the only time Lines Ballet has attracted celebrity attention. 

Last spring, “Saturday Night Live” alum Cheri Oteri flew in from Los Angeles just for the dance company’s gala to catch her friend Aaron Walton, a Lines Ballet board member, do a special walk-on during the night’s performance. 

“I had to see my friend because he introduced me to Lines Ballet,” Oteri told the Chronicle at the time, her luggage still in tow at the gala dinner. 

But more importantly, she added, “when you witness this kind of art form, you’re so blown away by the beauty of it … you want to keep it going. And now more than ever, the arts need to be supported.”

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified a person in a photo with Jane Fonda. It was Lines Ballet dancer Adji Cissoko.