Critics' Picks 2025

Throughout the year, our critics attend hundreds of dance performances, whether onsite, outdoors, or on the proscenium stage, around the world. To cap the year the was, we asked each writer to highlight their most outstanding performance of 2025. What follows is the list, in no particular order.

Audrey Sides in “Rituel” by Benjamin Millepied. Photograph by Farah Sosa, courtesy of the LA Phil. L.A. Dance Project

Los Angeles Dance Project’s “Rituel”

In a difficult year—politically and otherwise—this reviewer was able to take solace in dance. And while there were oodles of outstanding performances in Los Angeles, Benjamin Millepied’s “Rituel,” which was presented at Walt Disney Concert Hall last May, was breathtaking on all counts. Featuring six members of his LA Dance Project, the number was set to the über-rhythmic music of Pierre Boulez (1925-2016), and was led by Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s conductor laureate, the crack musicians creating a delicious sonic world.

At 35 minutes, the piece not only offered movement opportunities for these Petrouchka-like beings to whirl to Boulez’ beats, but also allowed for gorgeous tableaux that could have been ancient, modern, or a nod to the future, with slithery strides the flawless counterparts to gorgeous lifts and constant finger-fluttering that seemed to serve as a beating-heart prayer to the goddess Shiva. There was also the perfection of the ending: Courtney Conovan, somehow managing to curl up at the feet of Salonen on the podium, proved a metaphor for gratitude—to the music, the maestro, and the moment. Indeed, here was art that made one glad to be alive. –Victoria Looseleaf

A.I.M by Kyle Abraham’s “An Untitled Love”

January 2025 already feels like ages ago, but one memory still shines through the blur of those cold evenings: A.I.M by Kyle Abraham’s “An Untitled Love” at Sadler’s Wells. The production, which premiered in Chicago in 2021, came to London as part of the Rose International Dance Prize, for which it was nominated. It didn’t win that award, but the very same performance later earned an Olivier nod. The recognition feels inevitable. No other work I saw this year—or last—reached so deeply into the heart of what makes us human: our love, our hurt, our dance. And none expressed it with such unguarded joy.

Set to the R&B stylings of D’Angelo, the hour-long work weaves social dance, contemporary steps, and tender scenes inspired by Abraham’s own family. Tableaus flow effortlessly into the next, building in both intimacy and exuberance as the piece progresses. In one, four women sitting on a couch cross and recross their legs, their heads tilting toward one another in quiet familiarity; simple gestures—a lifted eyebrow, a flicked wrist—carry whole histories. In another, two dancers perform a pas de deux to “Really Love,” their bodies bending and coiling together before drifting apart, carried away by the undercurrent of the song’s upright bass.

These moments reminded me of what dance can do at its best, which is to give us a chance to catch love in real time. D’Angelo’s passing in October only makes Abraham’s work more sweet, more rare. I award it all the prizes there are. –Phoebe Roberts

“Room to Move: Dance Theater Workshop and Alternative Histories of Downtown Dance” at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

This year, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts' Jerome Robbins Dance Division presented an inspiring exhibition celebrating the enduring impact of Dance Theater Workshop. “Room to Move: Dance Theater Workshop and Alternative Histories of Downtown Dance” demonstrated DTW's enormous reach in supporting dancers in New York City and beyond.

DTW is maybe most remembered for its emerging artist Choreographers Showcase—now known as Fresh Tracks—and the number of careers that these performances helped jumpstart. The best part of "Room to Move" was a collection of archival videos from this series brought to life on large screens that were peppered throughout the gallery. In “Room to Move,” visitors were transported to these historic moments of becoming as if peering in from behind a curtain. We were there, too, as a young Bebe Miller slow danced, an ebullient Bill T. Jones rebounded off the floor, Elizabeth Streb navigated a baton, and Mark Morris flew across the stage, all for some of the first major times in their careers. —Cecilia Whalen

Paris Opera Ballet in “Play” by Alexander Ekman. Photograph by Ann Ray | OnP

Paris Opera Ballet in Alexander Ekman’s “Play”

What is life if not a game? The Paris Opéra began 2025 in dazzling style with Alexander Ekman’s masterpiece “Play.” During the Christmas season, as we said goodbye to one year and welcomed the next, the work returned with its gallery of absurd characters and surreal juxtapositions: the corps de ballet improvising games on stage, women on pointe wearing helmets and antlers, an astronaut, a couple performing the most romantic pas de deux, a bare-chested man with a huge white crown and an enormous skirt, and a second act that spiraled into a bureaucratic nightmare of office rhythms and shifting cubes. Then came the explosive finale: a cascade of green balls rained down onto the stage, joining the dancers’ playful movement as an almost living presence, and gigantic white balloons drifted through the gilded Palais Garnier, propelled by the audience, carrying the entire auditorium into a fully ludic dimension. In Ekman’s world, play is a way of life—a generative act in which reality is continually reinvented. The performance unfolded through a distinctive blend of dance, theatre and music, born of a collaborative process, all of it set to Michael Karlsson’s score, performed by the orchestra on an elevated platform on stage.

It was Aurélie Dupont’s inspired decision to bring Ekman and his team to Paris in 2017, and the ballet’s resonance remains undiminished. If “Play” is the best performance of the year, it is because it speaks urgently to our time, encouraging us to rethink life as a form of carefree making and to reconnect with the joy of action rather than the anxiety of achievement. Play is not a distraction—at least not in the sense of the passive, time-wasting activities that dominate contemporary life. It is a return to the powerful, childlike notion of the game as the essence of what is human. Creation lies at its core: to play is to generate new worlds and new meanings. At a moment when so many individual and collective activities seem to be leading us towards exhaustion and destruction, “Play” advocates for the pleasure of acting just because—playing a part, playing an instrument, playing the game of life. While the contemporary mantra of setting goals can mislead and expose us to deception, play becomes pure happiness and pleasure: a celebration of life, freedom and possibility that gives rise to a refreshing sense of surprise and awe—much like the feeling we experience at the end of this ballet. —Elsa Giovanna Simonetti

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company

Transitions can often be unsure, shaky times. But, as Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company lovingly bid adieu to longtime leader Daniel Charon at the end of the 2024/25 season and welcomed incoming artistic director Leslie Kraus at the beginning of 2025/26, they were as strong and steady as ever. Charon’s final work for the company as artistic director, “From Code to Universe,” and Kraus’ first, “Listening Hour,” were movement-based testaments to the sure-footed trajectory of the company.

“From Code to Universe,” which Charon created in collaboration with Alexandra Harbold, bravely examined life after loss through an accessible yet profound dance-theater structure. The company’s 2025/26 season opener, Reverberation, ended with “Listening Hour,” an eerie and moving work that seemed to examine the process of conversing with one’s inner demons. Transitioning from Charon’s lyrical style to Kraus’ more raw aesthetic, the company did not falter, instead delivering incredibly meaningful portrayals that suggest a company headed for new heights. –Sophie Bress

Trajal Harrell’s “Monkey Off My Back or The Cat’s Meow”

As I strolled into the Park Avenue Armory alongside my longtime friend and most treasured show-going companion, we chatted as usual about what we’re seeing in the world of dance and performance. “Most things are just too long,” he said. I responded, “Yeah, people think a show needs to take up my whole night, or that a one-act needs to be like 75 minutes when 45 will almost always do it.” I think some part of me knew that I was walking into a two-hour marathon—Trajal Harrell’s “Monkey Off My Back or The Cat’s Meow”—but the irony didn’t dawn on me until I rose to applaud. Because as the extended procession of bows in “Monkey’s” final act unspooled with stately and capacious grace, I found I didn’t want it to end.

Harrell’s formidable voice returned to New York with the monumental 2021 work, created during his tenure with Schauspielhaus Zürich (he now leads the Zürich Dance Ensemble), and he has lost none of his refined, knife’s-edge New York swagger. Premised on a fashion show that plays out on an enormous Mondrian-inspired color block floor, “Monkey” sways and teeters on high heels—real and imagined—through a low-frequency, high-impact dramaturgical arc carried along by a playlist that roots itself in a singular sense of soul stretched across a catalog of styles and genres. The same can be said of Harrell’s choreography, which treads deftly between the queer high fashion vernacular of voguing, the quotidian spareness of postmodernism, and the sculptural-emotional evocations of butoh. The eighteen excellent performers—Harrell included—sustain attention with easy confidence and bold vulnerability to craft a time-bending sense of intimacy amid the cavernous Armory Drill Hall. I could have stayed for hours. –Sarah Cecilia Bukowski

Hofesh Shechter Company in “Theatre of Dreams.” Photograph by Tom Visser

Hofesh Shechter Company’s “Theatre of Dreams”

Even in the company of so many standout productions during this fall’s first ever Powerhouse International Festival, Hofesh Shechter’s “Theatre of Dreams,” occupies a world apart. The 90-minute dance theater work, with a dynamic 3-piece band, burrows into the subconscious with sharp stagecraft and a cast that holds nothing back.

The work begins with a small opening in the curtain. But as soon as the first dancer steps through that portal, the stage quickly becomes a multiverse of parallel dreaming. Curtains snap open and shut as rapidly as synaptic messages sent through the brain. In them, imagistic scenes accumulate under Tom Visser’s inventive overhead lighting design. Some escalate like quick cuts in a horror film, while others linger like so many lounge singers in a David Lynch movie.

About midway through the work, in the moment before a dancer is bisected by a curtain—his body literally caught in the fabric—an ensemble ages in reverse: gestures of frailty turn to sexier grinding before becoming a kind of cradling of one another. This quick set of associations can’t help but color his bardo state as a kind of birthing canal. In another vignette, the curtain continually reveals the common dream of running in place. But with every recurrent pull, the dancer is different from the last and missing another piece of clothing.

The result is a complete smashing of the fourth wall; a setup that allows the performers to reach out to us, but one that, ultimately, seems most keen on inviting us in. Shechter’s vision is more than a literal or figurative peek behind the veil: the choreography of curtains bends time while the dancing thrashes long past the danger of any cliche. Both drive straight into the interiority of so many somnambulant metaphors. The dizzying range of the band, which draws unlikely connections between so many genres of music, and the uncanny chemistry between the dancers, that disposes with transitions to enable thrilling partnering, kept me wondering about process: can that special trust and openness be found through hours of rehearsal or did the cast dream together too? –Candice Thompson

Bill T. Jones’s “Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin…the un-Ailey?”

The piece that moved me the most this year was Bill T. Jones’s “Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin…the un-Ailey?” Jones created this solo for the Whitney’s stunning “Edges of Ailey” retrospective that ran from September through February, and he premiered it at the museum in November. But I saw him perform it on his home turf, New York Live Arts, in May. Removed from the proximity of the many artworks, films, photographs, and sculptures of the exhibit, the opening mantra, St. Augustine’s “sedis animi est in memoria” (the seat of the mind is in memory) resonated even more. As Jones paced the stage, his wiry frame in expert motion nearly the whole time, he recounted his interactions with Ailey and mulled Ailey’s tremendous influence on his career as he strived to carve out his own niche.

“Memory Piece” was both intimate and grand. Jones vividly recalled a formative childhood experience of watching a battered woman in a sequined dress dancing to a jukebox on the Bellanger Migrant Labor Camp in 1958. He also elucidated the distinctions between various ballet and modern styles. He cursed a blue streak about his partner Arnie Zane’s death from AIDS. He also quoted Proust, Jim Morrison, Yvonne Ranier, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham (sometimes verbally, sometimes physically).

I was floored by Jones’s nesting doll excavations of artistic interpretation—and especially misinterpretation. In trying to situate Ailey’s legacy, he was forced to examine his own. And in rehashing the blatant prejudice and misreading he faced at the hands of critics Arlene Croce and Jack Anderson, his own sometimes harsh or dismissive assessments of Ailey’s choices—both professional and personal—began to soften. Instead of solidifying the arc of Ailey’s career (or his), he demonstrated the impossibility of pinning down any artist, but especially Black ones, “in the stressful, racist, pressure-cooker called the US and, in particular, the art world.”

With heartbreaking humility, Jones dedicated a lover’s prayer to Ailey, in which he lamented that his own hardened shell wouldn’t let him crack Ailey’s—though the latter had presented openings. “What am I trying to say?—to remember? I miss you Alvin/The Poet Seeker. I missed you—didn’t get to really know Mr. Ailey—other than your professional identity as a leader of Black dance, but missed what conversations we might have had if I had been able to accept you as friend, teacher and elder.” –Faye Arthurs

American Ballet Theatre’s in Christopher Wheeldon’s “The Winter's Tale”

American Ballet Theatre’s New York premiere of Christopher Wheeldon’s 2014 ballet, “The Winter’s Tale,” welcomed a powerful new Shakespearean drama into the company’s repertoire. Forget Shakespeare in the Park; this was Shakespeare at the Metropolitan Opera House, a merciful escape from the city’s oppressive humidity in early July. “The Winter’s Tale” had been long considered a comedy, and then one of the “romances,” by scholars, but the play itself has many tragic elements, exploring themes of love, jealousy, betrayal and the error and redemption of a passing generation. In the story, King Leontes goes mad with jealousy over his childhood best friend, King Polinexes and his wife Hermione, convincing himself that his daughter Perditia is actually that Polinexes. He accuses Hermione of adultery and orders Perditia banished; his son Mamilius dies after seeing Leontes abuse his Hermione, who then follows him in death, grieving. Meanwhile, Leontes’s servant Antigones, gone into the mountains to abandon Perditia, is mauled by a bear, but Perditia survives to be adopted by a jolly band of shepherds.

A shockingly dark first act gives way to a much lighter second, a narrative disjointedness that Wheeldon exploits for contrast—the suffocating city is exchanged for pastoral splendor. He discards, as Balanchine did, stuffy ballet mime for using dance vocabulary itself to tell the story. On the other hand, Jody Talbot’s score is thin on instrumentation, especially compared to other better known Shakespeare ballet scores by Prokofiev and Mendelssohn, which is why “The Winter's Tale” will never be a musical classic. Yet Wheeldon uses this sparseness to his advantage, choreographing brooding solos for Leontes that appear to have an internal musicality. Aran Bell played an increasingly complex Leontes, driven to jealous and unspeakable acts, yet spending the second act seeking redemption from his demons. Devon Teuscher danced Hermione. Designer Bob Crowley provided contrasting worlds to suit the dualities of the story—stark minimalistic columns for the air-deprived court and a colorful Peter Pan-like tree house for the joyful pastoral scenes, such that we don’t forget the story's roots in theatre. In the final pas de deux, Leontes and Hermione reunite in a tentative-then-bittersweet pas de deux expressing Hermione’s hard fought forgiveness and Leonte’s redemption, performed with especially poignant restraint by Bell and Teuscher. Behind them stands a statue of Mamilius. The final image is this statue forever frozen, watching over the still grieving widow of Antigonus, Paulina. Some loss remains unredeemed. Closing a psychological tour de force, the ending alone qualifies Wheeldon’s stab at Shakespeare as this critic's choice of 2025. –Robert Steven Mack

Emily Suzuki and Rentaro Nakaaki in Martha Graham's “Errand into the Maze.” Photograph by ASH

English National Ballet in Martha Graham’s “Errand into the Maze”

Martha Graham’s influence on British modern dance is widely felt, thanks to the artistic visions of protégés like Bonnie Bird and Robert Cohan, but restagings of her work in the UK are vexingly rare. It was such a treat to see English National Ballet mount “Errand into the Maze” at Sadler’s Wells earlier this year, Graham’s 1947 take on the clash between Theseus and the Minotaur. In her version, it’s a woman who squares off against the beast—a signature twist from a dancemaker who spent her career centring the female psyche. Emily Suzuki brought gracious energy to the role that Graham originated, kicking her long skirt into soulful half-moons, while Rentaro Nakaaki was her brutish adversary, magnetic with his taut poses and sharp breathing.

Between the high drama, the sexual tension, and the faithful recreations of Isamu Noguchi's exquisitely abstracted costumes and set, it felt like a living piece of modern art. They don't call Graham the “Picasso of Dance” for nothing. –Sara Veale

Twyla Tharp’s “Slacktide”

This choice of highlight might seem obvious or overplayed to New Yorkers who spent 2025 awash in Twyla Tharp’s ballets, but here in California we’re starved for her oeuvre. In February, a few dates into a months-long “Diamond Jubilee” tour celebrating 60 years of creativity, Twyla Tharp Dance came to UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances with just two works, one brand-new, one more than twenty-five years old. And as her hand-picked dancers sashayed through devilishly complex whirls of movement invention, time stood still.

The new dance, “Slacktide,” quite literally picked up where Tharp’s earlier masterpiece to the music of Philip Glass, 1986’s “In the Upper Room,” left off, by actually starting with movement phrases from that work. Third Coast Percussion played the pulsing score from the pit, while Reed Tankersley powered his stocky body in comet trails of virtuosity across the stage. The older dance, 1998’s “Diabelli,” was even more wondrous, making sly child’s play of choreographing an hour of Beethoven at his trickiest. With pianist Vladimir Rumyantsev performing live, “Diabelli” was a humorous, heavenly mind-boggle. –Rachel Howard

New Worlds: Suzi Cunningham

Watching Suzi Cunningham dance is like being let in on a secret, one which unlocks a hidden world. The best dancers create new worlds within a world. Petite and fairy-like, she always brings something entirely unexpected to dance performance, whether it be for children or adults, festival or site-specific. Cunningham, based in Edinburgh, crosses dance genres as easily as breathing: her work is complex and extremely multifaceted.

I first encountered her unique, extraordinary work at the Mirabilia Festival in Italy in 2016. I was mesmerized by this wee sprite, emerging from discarded trash and detritus. She was at once commenting on the ubiquity of consumerism, and creating something beautiful and otherworldly from the quotidian.

This year, her ever restless spirit took her to Butoh Camp in Morocco and she had a residency in Kelburn forest. This sums up the duality often found in her choreography. She is as ethereal as Tinker Bell, radiating pure joy; or can transform into a spiky figure reminiscent of a punk performer, spitting out home truths. Her practice is informed by butoh, pop culture, ritual, and contemporary dance, but is impossible to categorise. As her small, lithe frame makes angular shapes, so too does her work shapeshift. She is a magical dancer, exploring details in the micro and the macro. We can never second-guess Suzi Cunningham. She's truly inspirational. –Lorna Irvine

Nederlands Dans Theater in Sharon Eyal's “Into the Hairy.” Photograph by Rahi Rezvani

Nederlands Dans Theater in Sharon Eyal's “Into the Hairy”

I could never say a work of dance had driven me to feel borderline unwell until I watched Nederlands Dans Theater and Sharon Eyal Dance L-E-D’s final performance of “Into the Hairy” on its Netherlands tour this June. This beautifully disturbing piece by Eyal, which runs about 45 minutes, has stayed present in my mind since, its clusters of 28 dancers moving slowly, gurgling and pulsating. Eyal’s choreography demands technical excellence, through which repetitive, seemingly simple movements take on a higher consciousness—a walk en relevé is not simply a walk when paired with an off-kilter posture and dramatic gestures of the arms. Especially not when a whole company of dancers is walking in a tight-knit group that resembles some kind of alien organism.

“Into the Hairy” is the kind of work against which I’ll draw comparisons for years to come, simply because I’d never seen anything quite like it. Lucky for us all, in April, a filmed version of the piece will be available through NDT’s digital theater for anyone to view. –Rebecca Deczynski

Grupo Corpo’s “21”

The best, most memorable dancing I saw in 2025 was Grupo Corpo's April performance at Zellerbach Hall. The Brazilian company brought their signature work “21” from 1992, and 2017's “Gira.” The works were unique in content and perspective, but the identity of the company felt so strong; a strength realized from a true ensemble of dancers. Seeing 22 dancing bodies together on stage still feels like a gift five years out from the pandemic, and to see 22 dancers so in tune with each other, so trusting and so generous was transcendent. In “21” there is a unison choreographic motif in which the outstretched palms of both hands drop into circles in front of the torso like the tracing of a clock face. The motion's simplicity proved irresistible to the audience as I saw many patrons mimicking it as we left the theater, briefly in tune, dancing together. –Garth Grimball

Tulsa Ballet’s “Alice”

A visually stunning and highly entertaining production for twenty-first-century audiences, Tulsa Ballet's “Alice” was a multimedia spectacle featuring Broadway-level production elements, Kenneth Tindall's well-thought-out and illustrative choreography, and a vibrant original score by Alexandra Harwood.

The million-dollar production, which premiered this past February at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, was also chock full of brilliant dancing, including memorable performances by Nao Ota as an effervescent Alice, Shi Jean Kim as the high-flying White Rabbit, Aubin Le Marchand as the madcap Mad Hatter, and Jaimi Cullen as the ruthlessly funny Queen of Hearts. –Steve Sucato

Faye Driscoll’s “Weathering.” Photograph by Kevin Monko

Faye Driscoll’s “Weathering” with Jennifer Nugent’s “Centrifugal Force”

The Philadelphia Fringe Festival changed hands this year from founder Nick Stuccio to Nell Bang-Jensen. Yet the programming’s fearlessness has never wavered. If 2024’s finale, Trajal Harrell’s “The Köln Concert” brought me to my knees with its mysticism, the 2025 opener, Faye Driscoll’s “Weathering” nearly drove me mad. In a good way. Like one of those tunes that repeats in your mind, it’s multiplicity of meanings, and uncompromising onslaught of ideas still keep churning in my thoughts.

Although each dancer/performer held the line without breaking Driscoll’s tough imagery, above all, one performer stood out—Jennifer Nugent, who received a 2019 Master’s Degree from the recently closed University of the Arts. She’s at the center of the scrum of bodies on a movable square mattress—not easy to keep your footing. As her mouth grotesquely draws down to the left as if in a stroke, drooling, she agonizingly and with infinitesimal movements seems to be the spoke that turns the square around. She’s the column that holds the rest of the cast together with superhuman willpower. So Driscoll’s concept and Nugent’s centrifugal realization of it would be my critic’s pick for 2025. –Merilyn Jackson

“Times Four/David Gordon: 1975/2025”by David Gordon, with additional choreography by Wally Cardona

What strikes me most about the 2025 New York dance scene is its appetite for the past. From masters of twentieth-century modern dance such as Paul Taylor, Trisha Brown, and Jose Limon to Danspace Project’s 50th anniversary celebrating downtown dance (Bebe Miller, Blondell Cummings, Donna Uchizono), I witnessed a fascinating selection of vintage works lovingly coaxed back to life. The performance that lingers foremost in my mind is Wally Cardona and Molly Lieber in “Times Four/David Gordon: 1975/2025.” The artists, while faithful to David Gordon’s original vision, added on to the work, thus drawing a clear line from the Grand Union of the ‘70s and today.

“Times Four” is a series of movements that repeat and accrue. Performed in a relaxed unison, the vocabulary is spare and clean. The dancers allow the body what it might naturally do, for example, in getting up and down repeatedly from the floor. And yet, the mental focus is remarkable in terms of repetitions, changes in facing, shifts in weight, timing. “Times Four” induces a spiritually transformative state that likely appealed in politically volatile 1975 much the same as in 2025. There was a palpable reverence in the air from the moment Cardona and Leiber stepped into the performance space—the very same SoHo loft where Gordon and Valda Setterfield first performed “Times Four” 50 years ago. By the end of the hour-long piece, I could sense the presence of the previous duo, taking posthumous bows alongside the vibrant in-the-flesh Cardona and Lieber. –Karen Hildebrand

From Me to Mwe: Limón’s “Chaconne” Restaged

I love a fresh take that gives new meaning to a classic expression. So, when I attended the Limón Dance Company’s 80th anniversary season this past October at the Joyce Theater, I was blown away by the restaging of “Chaconne,” a solo Limón created for himself in 1942. The solo was choreographed to Bach’s “Chaconne from Partita #2 in D Minor for Unaccompanied Violin,” and draws from the music's structure of theme and variations. So much of Limón’s work celebrates the majesty of the human spirit, and one feels that in “Chaconne” as the dancer begins by traversing a diagonal asserting the individual self in space. With notable gestures (backs of the wrists held together with a flourish overhead), classical shapes, and formal stances from a courtly era; Limón shaped a movement representation of Bach's music that sparks its own universe of associations.

Over the years, I had seen many accomplished company members perform the solo, including several women. But when I saw Logan Frances Kruger’s (one of those soloists) restaging of the work as a tribute to the collective, I was moved to tears. Kruger transformed this exquisite meditation on form and the dignity of the individual into a multigenerational homage. The work was reimagined for an ensemble of Limón Company dancers past and present, members of Limón 2, students, and featured elders Alice Condodina and Nina Watt with the music played live by violinist John Marcus. The elders graced the dance with their innate embodiment of the movement language, while the dancers who currently hold the solo exuded a magnetism that drew the expanded group into a singular energy and orbit. Limón’s stately opening was amplified by multiple bodies performing in unison. Smaller groups, entering and interweaving, created textural density and an intensification of the variations (as in the music) until the dancing bodies multiplied, swelling into a vibrant vision of community. Then, in a process of diminution, the numbers reduced to a solo figure. By the end, all the dancers were present—performing the original movement theme—merged in a profound statement of integrated unity. Dr. Dan Siegel, one of my favorite mindfulness researcher-thinkers, discusses expanding and evolving the notion of the self from an isolated and separate “me” to a relational, interconnected, and integrated “Mwe” (Me + We). With this restaging of “Chaconne,” the Limón Dance Company created a stirring vision of “Mwe.” –Karen Greenspan

Luke Murphy | Attic Projects’s “Volcano.” Photograph by Ben McKeown

Luke Murphy | Attic Projects’s “Volcano”

This July, I attended the American Dance Festival for the first time, eager to soak up a piece of modern dance history while living abroad in the US. Somewhat ironically, the main performance I attended was “Volcano” by Luke Murphy’s Attic Projects; while I had hopped across the Atlantic from Scotland, Irish choreographer Murphy works mainly between London and Ireland. “Volcano” is not only one of the best pieces of dance-theatre I saw in 2025, it’s one of the best I have ever seen.

Described as ‘live performance for the Netflix era’, this sci-fi thriller poses a challenge to its audience: a run-time of 225 minutes, with only two pauses and one intermission. My trepidation upon entering these four 45-minute episodes (without corresponding ‘Netflix-era’ comfortable seats) was soon forgotten, however. “Volcano” is stupidly ambitious: Murphy and fellow performer Will Thompson are confined to a see-through box that pens them in onstage, representing a spaceship whose journey and stated objective is unclear. Their tale is told through dexterous partnering and emotive dialogue, complete with unreliable perspectives, murky time arcs and kitschy references to popular culture and defining historical moments. It’s gripping and surprising, wherever you view it from. –Róisín O’Brien

Saïdo Lehlouh’s “Témoin”

France is witnessing a revolution, but unlike the gilets jaunes and hordes of student activists, it is a revolution that takes the action off the streets and onto the stage. French street dance has been making a name for itself over the years and has finally, and deservedly, seen recognition by arts institutions in the country. Figures like Mehdi Kerkouche and Mounia Nassangar have already started making names for themselves as the commercial-turned-contemporary director of the Centre Chorégraphique de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne and an internationally sought-after waacking extraordinaire respectively.

But it is one of the co-directors of Brittany’s choreographic centre that has delivered perhaps the most impactful mission statement of this nouvelle-vague of French dance, Saïdo Lehlouh. Touring to London earlier this year as part of “Breakin’ Convention 2025” was Lehlouh’s “Témoin” (Witness), a creation for 20 dancers. Shadowy and intense, absolutely brimming with impeccable dance, and unapologetically linked to urban culture, “Témoin” shows a near cinematic level of atmosphere. A blend of breaking, waacking, krumping, and old-school hip-hop, it is one of very few works to have completely taken my breath away. –Eoin Fenton

Sandra Parker’s “Consequences”

In a world where the certainty of a future is not a given, for my ‘best’ performance of 2025, I am rolling with a work-in-progress showing of Sandra Parker’s “Consequences.” Shown in still-forming, unfixed state, the dancers—Jazmyn Carter, Benjamin Hurley, Rachel Mackie, and Oliver Savariego—held sculptural poses. “Consequences” sprang from the root of the upward movement, and in the stillness, there was living, breathing humanness. In the quartet, though all moved as one, there was individuality, from a shoulder rolled further forward or a head tilted upward. Connectivity allows a line to be drawn to Ian McEwan’s novel, What We Can Know, as Parker discussed with Jo Lloyd in the Q&A session that followed. There in the room, the same sense of looking back, from the submerged vantage of 2199, in the full face of the climate emergency, to 2014 and the choices knowingly made by the few at the top for the many below. A world of system responsiveness, of consequences.

As the dancers spoke about how the sustained pauses required them to be particularly present as they thought about each other and what comes next, the same could also be used to describe the climate emergency: thinking about what comes next. What, too, lies ahead for a work-in-progress, and will the site specificity of the next location change it? In the former Temperance Hall in South Melbourne on a damp, grey summer’s day, let this peep at something as it grows, and because of what it foretells, be my highlight for ’25. As the dancers repeated sequences, they evoked a sense of hope as they re-learned ways of being in the world, whatever her state. –Gracia Haby

Tetsuya Kumakawa’s K-Ballet Tokyo

In “Rewind,” the opening prologue of K-Ballet Tokyo’s 25th Anniversary Gala, the curtains rose on a bare stage. Costumed mannequins come into view, marking a path into the future. Tetsuya Kumakawa, iconic dancer and founder of the company, stood silently in the spotlight, staring at the costumes.

The Gala premiered in Tokyo on July 25, 2025. A week before, K-Ballet Tokyo announced that Kumakawa would step down as artistic director, a position he’s held since founding the company in 1999. His new role is general director, focusing on various initiatives and original productions. Onstage, it is Kumakawa the dancer who opens the gala, partnering the company’s newest principal, Yuka Iwai, in the Bedroom Pas de deux from Roland Petit’s “Carmen.” His presence, footwork, and strength in the lifts is a stunning foil to Iwai’s delicacy and youth—but this opening excerpt is more about the story.

Before he dances, a letter to Kumakawa from Petit himself is projected onstage. Kumakawa’s original 2014 version of “Carmen” is the company’s first completely new grand ballet where Kumakawa’s path from superstar to storyteller became complete. The next two hours onstage unfold the Company’s chronological journey from 1999, with rare footage from Kumakawa as a dancer and excerpts from important works, including all K-Ballet Tokyo's original productions up to last year's triumphant “Mermaid.” The metaphor for the opening sequence is thus clear—the history of the company, and Kumakawa himself, dancer to storyteller. 2025 was a good year for K-Ballet Tokyo in celebrating its 25th. –Kris Kosaka

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