When the curtain rises on “Al-Andalus Blues,” Jamar Roberts’s new work for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, it does so deliberately and unwaveringly, as if building drama before a big reveal. In this mysterious tableau, a group is planted on and around a glowing rock formation. (It looked like a lumpy mattress.) One figure draws the eye: Hannah Alissa Richardson, a dancer and a warrior rolled into one. Her arms serpentine around her. She looks like a flame.
In “Al-Andalus Blues,” which premiered Friday at New York City Center, Richardson — sporting a uniform-unitard costume with metallic details on the shoulders and ankles — sticks close to her spot as she strikes an arm forward, her pliant torso bending and twisting.
Both of those willowy arms extend and undulate, then swirl overhead to flash a flamenco pose. Her elbows bend sharply as her fingers, palms forward, splay above her head and sprout a crown. Richardson’s supple back, a ripple of contractions, guides those expressive arms, which appear as steely as spears or as fluid as silk. She is gleaming, resolute.
However striking the scene, though, four memorable words can’t help but creep to mind: “Beam me up, Scotty.”
“Al-Andalus Blues” has a futuristic, outer space mood, which is emphasized by Roberts and Jon Taylor’s costumes — they’re startling, like encountering Comic-Con on the subway. In this dance, Roberts looks to the age of Al-Andalus in Spain (the 8th century to 1492), and imagines the Moors who lived there before the Reconquista, or the reconquest, of the Iberian Peninsula by Christians. Medieval Spain seems a strange path to Afro-futurism, but there you have it.
ImageHannah Alissa Richardson was the standout in “Al-Andalus Blues.”Credit...Rachel Papo for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.
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