Few companies deliver a "wow factor" like Alonzo King's LINES Ballet, making it the perfect opening for the Pittsburgh Dance Council season. But "wow" so often simply means packing an entertainment punch; this program, co-sponsored by the African American Cultural Center, had more.

Much has been written about King's abstract modernism; he has alluded to the life forces that surround us and impel his sometimes quizzical movements. In the company's Pittsburgh premiere at the Byham Theater Saturday night, King showed that he has chiseled his dance into an organic stream of motion that is hypnotic, carrying the audience on its own private mystical journey.

"Koto," inspired by a Japanese musical instrument similar to a zither, was an introduction for the audience and a gradual warm-up for the dancers. It began with Laurel Keen swinging a stick in ever-widening circles, gradually able to help herself en pointe.

The dancers and the dance built in speed and imagination, touching upon the Japanese aesthetic in a battle where a yielding victim emerged victorious. Repeated pique arabesques resembled an undulating Japanese landscape painting.

Ballet was, of course, recognizable in the thematic material -- a deconstructed tendu where the arm folded in on a dancer and a wide-spread fourth position as an anchor. It was easy to see a George Balanchine/William Forsythe thread in movement that flew wildly beyond the vertical, where arms and legs traced multiple trajectories, only to be miraculously pulled back into suitable balletic control.

King is a choreographic conduit through which flows a beehive of artistic inspiration, including the chunky shapes of modern dance and the great historic traditions in ethnic dance. At the forefront is his African American heritage, where he created lush, rhythmic, canonic phrases. He kept the music spare and costumes subtle, so that the viewer could bathe in the richness of his dance vocabulary. He also balanced his breathtaking whirlwind of movement with meditative sequences.

"Who Dressed You Like a Foreigner?" tapped the Indian patterns of drummer Zakir Hussain. Based on a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, the segments included "Duty," in which Drew Jacoby's voluptuous extensions evoked gasps from the audience, "Silence" and "Faith." My favorite was "Time," set to clacking vocalization, allowing these dazzling dancers to unleash their technique in a series of solos. (It's difficult to get a true unison with the complexity of King's vision.) Brett Conway always had an additional ripple to add to King's dance lexicon; Prince Credell had an unbelievable vortex of control in his blinding spins.

But "Foreigner" didn't end there. King brought the audience back to earth -- Mother Earth -- in a tableau setting resembling Michelangelo's "Pieta." Keen cradled Conway in her arms, then taught him to walk, pushed him to move. It was a perfect blend of East and West in the universal setting that King so obviously advocated.