Shaolin monks, jazz musicians, and the Pygmies of Central Africa are just some of the people choreographer Alonzo King has invited onstage to perform with the classically trained dancers of his LINES Ballet, the company he founded 26 years ago in San Francisco.

These collaborations have helped establish Mr. King internationally as a choreographer and teacher who simultaneously embraces classical ballet and other forms of dance and movement. And now they’ve helped him become the recipient of the second annual Jacob’s Pillow Award for Creativity, which carries a $25,000 unrestricted cash gift, funded by an anonymous donor.

The executive director of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Ella Baff, will present the award to Mr. King on Saturday in the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s season opening gala in Becket, Mass.

Ms. Baff said part of the reason Mr. King was selected for the award is that he remains under-recognized in America, and especially on the East Coast, “where you have to be smack in the middle of New York to be noticed,” she said.

“This is to give Alonzo a boost because he’s very deserving. He’s moving ballet in a very 21st-century direction,” Ms. Baff, who selected Mr. King after consultation with senior staff and colleagues, said in a telephone interview from the festival’s campus in Becket.

Mr. King and his company have achieved a coveted goal in the dance world: attracting new and nontraditional audiences (the Shaolin monk performances drew, for example, martial arts practitioners). The company maintains a rigorous worldwide touring schedule. This summer, LINES Ballet will perform at the Venice Biennale and at two festivals in France before heading to Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. The company is fully booked for the next three years.

Ms. Baff noted that his dancers are “out of this world” and praised Mr. King’s “strong point of view.” With her own rigorous worldwide travel schedule to see dance and curate her festival, Ms. Baff appreciates “that every piece that he makes is so beautifully integrated in terms of lighting and costume and set and music. You really feel like you have a very well-integrated experience when you see his work. The way in which he collaborates with his designers and musicians is very strong and very authentic and it really produces very beautiful results,” she said.

Mr. King has, in fact, been receiving several boosts lately. His company recently moved into a new home; his school is thriving, and he started a dance degree program at Dominican University. LINES Ballet has received more than $1.5 million in foundation grants in the past couple of years.

One of the grant providers, the Wallace Foundation, is supporting the company’s audience-development initiatives with a $250,000 contribution. “We’re interested in bringing the benefits of arts appreciation and engagement to the greatest number of people. Alonzo King is remarkable among artistic directors and choreographers in his dedication to this goal,” an arts specialist at the Wallace Foundation, Rory McPherson, said.

Mr. King acknowledged that his innovative ways challenge audiences to think about dance differently. “People may find my work curious and not fully understand it at first, because it’s not something they’re accustomed to,” he said by telephone from Jackson Hole, Wyo., where tomorrow LINES Ballet begins a two-night engagement.

But in his eyes, the blending of different traditions of movement is completely natural. “When people look at my work deeply, they realize this isn’t any different at all,” Mr. King said.

Mr. King was raised in Georgia and California and hails from a family of civil rights activists. He came to New York to train in classical ballet at the Harkness School and on full scholarship at the School of American Ballet. He danced with Dance Theater of Harlem and American Ballet Theatre before going back to the West Coast and founding LINES in 1982.

He has never strayed from ballet, but he doesn’t limit himself to thinking about ballet as a Eurocentric art form, either.

“Classical ballet has been borrowing since the beginning,” Mr. King said. “The whole idea of authorship seems funny. We’re discovering, and we’re discovering things that have always been there.”

By incorporating different traditions, Mr. King creates his own dance vocabulary. “When you see a piece of his, you know it is an Alonzo piece,” the founder of Dance Theatre of Harlem, Arthur Mitchell, said. Mr. Mitchell described Mr. King as “one of the finest, most prolific choreographers today. What makes him so rare is that he uses the classical ballet technique, when everyone else has abandoned it for modern.”

Mr. King said he is keen on receiving an award that features an image of Jacob’s Pillow’s founder, Ted Shawn. Shawn and his dance partner Ruth St. Denis’s explorations of non-Western dance forms helped pave the way for Mr. King’s experimentation.

“It’s a beautiful connection to me, it really is. Ruth St. Denis did all these dances based on her travels to India,” Mr. King said.

Mr. King also spoke of his admiration of the festival Shawn created in the Berkshires 76 years ago. “It’s like a cathedral of dance. I’ve been all over the world. Going to Jacob’s Pillow is going to a place that feels like home. There’s a receptivity, a warmth, a familiarity,” Mr. King said.

Does receiving an award make him think about his legacy? “No. I do think I could be snatched away any minute. While I’m here, I want to be giving as much as I can.” What’s next? “More and better.”