Abandoning a performance piece for a new one two days before it is supposed to go up would make most artists, and their presenters, panic. Not so for Jérôme Bel, who flew in to New York from Paris in September to kick off The French Institute Alliance Française Crossing The Line series with his work, The Last Performance (a Lecture).

The body is a vessel for sacrifice both literally and symbolically in Moses Pendleton’s Passion, the 17-year-old dance work that opened Momix’s run at The Joyce Theater in May. The episodic piece set to Peter Gabriel’s score for the film The Last Temptation of Christ is a visual feast with bodies that are pushed to extreme physical limits, but its substance does not fully match that of the music.

Her movement phrases were sporadic and small considering the space she inhabited, but like Thompson’s, they were controlled and energetic. She kicked her leg up with ease and moved around herself with stability. Thurrell ended up lying prone on the pile of chicken wire, with her lower legs crossed as if in playful thought—one of the resonating physical similarities across all three interpretations.

A single tear streamed down Sam Kim’s face as she slowly turned her head to the audience at the end of her newest choreographic work dumb dumb bunny performed at The Kitchen in October.

Life as an artist in New York City is rough. Dreams don’t always pan out and realities cause disillusionment. You come, you shine, you’re silenced. It happens all too often.

dancenOw/NYC Festival, Sept. 4-10 at DTW, allows you to see 70-plus artists at varied points in their careers.

An American flag covers a dancer like a soldier’s body before burial. A fist pushes through the place where the heart would be, mimicking the organ’s pulsating rhythm and suggesting life under what appears to be dead.

Everyone deals with death in different ways. This has never been more apparent than in Neta Pulvermacher’s evening of works at Dance New Amsterdam in June.

I love the true immediate nature of seeing live dance performances. Its fleeting quality heightens the experience, but it also makes it more susceptible to being forgotten.

Undergraduate performances are not always appropriate for the critical eye, but a performance of dance works set on undergrads by well-known choreographers certainly is. With sophisticated and pleasing results, Yanira Castro, Ivy Baldwin and Daniel Gwirtzman created new pieces for Barnard University students this April for a concert dubbed Tharp/Sugar Salon/Gwirtzman.

If you’ve never seen Miguel Gutierrez’s work, you’re missing out. There are people who are born to make art, to make us think, to make us question what we do, and Miguel is one of those people.

What excites me about the dance company everything smaller is just about everything: their collaborative work, their athleticism, their art, and their dedication.

Church bells rang and Chapel/Chapter, a performance work by Bill T. Jones, began. The location: the newly refurbished Gatehouse, an old water pumping station in Hamilton Heights. The time: evening on a cool night in December. The subject: violence and murder. The motive: we are all witnesses and judges.

“Since I can remember, I have been dancing, and since being introduced to dance criticism and writing over 10 years ago, I have remained an active, passionate participant as a performer, choreographer, writer, and fundraiser. For these reasons, I am thrilled to continue my participation in the field of dance as an editor for the Brooklyn Rail.”

There’s no better way to start off a new dance season than to reflect on the past season’s highlights. Hosted by artists Bebe Miller and Stephen Petronio, the 22nd Annual New York Dance and Performance Awards (known as the Bessies) did just that on September 17th in the same lengthy way that most ceremonies occur.

Burlesque used to be a mysterious concept to me. I caught a show or two but my idea of burlesque was short-sighted and oversimplified.

Joe Bowie, a dancer with the Mark Morris Dance Group for 16 years, sees the troupe’s Fort Greene home as maternal. David Leventhal, a nine-year company member and repertory teacher, calls it mysterious.