New York City Ballet’s Spring Gala kicked off on May 8 with a crush of limos disgorging socialites in spring finery, including one woman in a fluffy pink gown so huge she could barely squeeze into the lobby. Bored husbands hovered in their tuxes.

Onstage, an early Christopher Wheeldon ballet, “Soiree Musicale” to music by Samuel Barber, mobilized a dozen men, 10 of them from the corps, to tango with soloist Brittany Pollack. Wheeldon’s latest, the pretty duet “A Place for Us” for Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild, paired ornate movement with virtuoso playing by clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and pianist Nancy McDill.

The rest was basically snippets: There was a number from “West Side Story Suite” by Jerome Robbins and Peter Gennaro to Leonard Bernstein’s music, a shard from Robbins’ “Glass Pieces” and one song from George Balanchine’s “Who Cares?” featuring guest performer Queen Latifah crooning Gershwin’s “The Man I Love.” The grand finale was bits of Balanchine’s “Stars and Stripes” to John Phillip Sousa marches; Ashley Bouder and Andrew Veyette paced the mostly young cast.

Afterward, the regal audience dined and danced on the theater’s promenade. Outside the stage door, a select few were standing by to watch Queen Latifah, her tall silver sandals swapped for comfy slippers, hop into a limo and head into the night.

The Spring Gala was a sight, but there’s still more to see from New York City Ballet before the season’s through. The American Music Festival is still running for a limited time, followed by 33 ballets on 21 programs, featuring a new piece by corps member Justin Peck to music by Philip Glass.

If you go

New York City Ballet
Through June 9
David H. Koch Theater,
Columbus Avenue at 63^rd Street
$29-$155, 212-870-5570,
www.nycballet.com

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In homage to Ireland’s foremost 20th-century painter, Louis le Brocquy, Arcane Collective brings the canvas to the stage in a mesmerizing celebration that transforms the artist’s imagery into music and dance.

Irish broadcaster John Kelly moderates a discussion with director and choreographer Morleigh Steinberg, choreographer Oguri, and composers Paul Chavez and The Edge of U2. The work is concerned less with animating figures and physical shapes in le Brocquy’s mysterious paintings than it is with finding the meanings and energy within them.

With mesmerizing concentration and urgent dexterity the dance hints at a poetic narrative with an intensely seductive and gestural movement style.  The distinctive guitar techniques of The Edge set a compelling yet subtly textured tone for the work.  The spirit of the paintings come to life as the company performs excerpts from their latest production Cold Dream Colour.

PANEL

Paul Chavez, composer

The Edge, composer

John Kelly, moderator

Oguri, choreographer

Morleigh Steinberg, director and choreographer

Event Venue : Peter B. Lewis Theater

Event Date : May 11 and 12

Event Time : 7:30PM

Event Price : $35, $30

Call : (212) 423-3587

For tickets click here

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This event is part of the River to River Festival.

An evening of five composed works–including two music and dance world premieres–with Lar Lubovitch and his Dance Company in honor of the 45th anniversary of the company and Lubovitch’s 50th year in dance. The evening will feature live performances by Ransom Wilson’s group, Le Train Bleu, and special musical guests.

Immerse yourself in Capture/Release, an evening of five newly composed works, including two music and two dance world premieres, with Lar Lubovitch and his critically acclaimed Dance Company, in honor of his 45th Anniversary with the Company and his 50th year in dance. Featuring live performances by Ransom Wilson’s acclaimed group, Le Train Bleu, with special guests: vocalist Helga Davis, violinist Cornelius Dufallo, percussionist Pablo Rieppi, and Kronos Quartet cellist Jeffrey Zeigler.

Event Venue : Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts

Event Date : June 25

Event Time : 7:30PM

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This event is part of the River to River Festival

Open Rehearsals: Jun 16 – 22 6:30pm (2 hr.)
Performance: Jun 23 – 26 12pm, 1pm (15 min.) / Jun 27 1pm, 7pm (60 min.)

Brookfield Place Plaza, 200 Vesey Street

Open Rehearsal: Jun 30 6:30 – 8:30pm
Performance: Jul 1 – 2 12:30pm (60 min.)

One New York Plaza

Created by Bessie Award-winning Third Rail Projects (Jennine Willett, Tom Pearson, Zach Morris, Artistic Directors), Roadside Attraction is a versatile new work housed in and around a vintage 1977 Coleman pop-up camper that has been retrofitted to become the stage and setting for a new dance/theater performance, which incorporates the intimate, quirky, stunning and startling choreographic sensibility that is the hallmark of Third Rail’s critically-acclaimed work.

Roadside Attraction is a family vacation that steps back in time to when Supertramp was on the radio, Connect Four was on the folding table, and frisky business was in the bunks. Mom’s red “Candies” clapped from the camper’s linoleum kitchen window before she emerged in her cheetah print bathing suit with matching blanket, her platinum wig blowing in the breeze. Exploring expectations, acceptance, and the excruciating but illuminating identification with family role models, Roadside Attraction is a slice of nostalgic Americana, replete with string lights and lawn chairs.

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The high-flying No. 15 seed became the lowest-seeded team to make it to the second weekend of the tournament, and they’ve hardly been stodgy with the celebrations. In their first-round victory over Georgetown, they stuck to your basic “jump around like you’re shocked to even be there” celebrations.

But they broke out what has been described as the chicken dance in Sunday’s upset of San Diego State. They are the Eagles, so I’m assuming it’s supposed to be an eagle dance, but we’ve yet to receive clarification on that. You can get a glimpse of it above in the Bleacher Report video, but they were actually doing it on the bench after every big play.

Heck, after the win, in the locker room, even the student manager went crazy. The whole team busted a move as they entered, with the manager garnering front and center attention.

Aww, yeah. That’s what I’m talking about.

Oh, and did I mention their rap video? No? Yes, the geniuses at FGCU quickly put together a rap song and video after their win over Georgetown. The song is called “Dunk City” by Black Magic, featuring Bambi. Bambi would be a Ke$ha clone who rhymes “eagle” with “beagle.” “Black Magic” features such lines as “We giving top seeds asthma attacks” and “What you gonna say when we’re in the Final Four?” and a chorus with the line “We throwin’ alleys.” Enjoy.

Now all we need is to get the student manager in this video.

Speaking of alleys, here’s the dunk of the tournament so far, featuring “Comer to Fieler,” as Black Magic would say.

And as per journalistic requirements, since this is a post about Florida Gulf Coast, we are contractually obligated to include this photo of head coach Andy Enfield’s wife, former supermodel Amanda Marcum.

Follow Metro New York Sports Editor Mark Osborne on Twitter @MetroNYSports. Oh, did I mention Enfield is also a millionaire after selling stock in a company he helped start? Yeah, perfect life.

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The Secretary of State got low (real low) on the dance floor during a dinner in Johannesburg hosted by South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane  — and Hillary was lovin’ every minute of it!  

But the party didn’t stop there. Clinton, with her sick moves, attracted the attention of the event’s singer. The two proceeded to bump and grind in harmony, setting a new standard for parting politicians everywhere

Dayyuuuuum.

We’d also like to point out that this particular electric blue pant suit might be our favorite Hillary pant suit yet!

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Khan, an internationally acclaimed dancer who was recently the recipient of the Olivier Award, was commissioned by director Danny Boyle to choreograph and perform a moving number just before the athletes entered the stadium. Khan, 50 dancers and a 10-year-old boy performed a contemporary dance as the haunting voice of Emile Sandé sang the somber hymn “Abide With Me.”

Today, at a discussion led by BBC’s Alan Yentob, Khan, joined by his dance company’s producer Farooq Chaudhry, spoke of his vision behind the dance and the theme he and Boyle worked to create — mortality. He said the dancers were meant to symbolize spirits and the young boy was meant to symbolize “hope” and legacy.  

“He said to me, ‘I would love you to do something about mortality. I want you to do it to end the artistic part and after that, the athletes will come in,’” Khan told reporters about his conversation with Boyle.

When a reporter asked Khan how he felt about NBC cutting the performance from the U.S. viewing, a surprised expression came across his face and he admitted it was the first he had heard of it.

He later said, “I don’t know why they cut it, but I feel disheartened and disappointed, really. Is it not accessible enough? Is it not commercial enough? If it’s for those reasons, than I am really, really disappointed. Maybe it’s too simple. Maybe it’s too empty… I don’t know why they did it.”

Chaudhry, who told reporters he had just found the performance was cut before the press conference began, said, “I was really shocked and horrified and would like to know on what grounds the American media can make that decision.”

NBC had not responded to multiple requests for comment at the time this story was published.

The media, though, had already begun reporting about the “7/7 tribute” that was cut by NBC, with one glaring error: Khan made no mention during the 90 minute discussion about the terror attack on London on July 7, 2005 that claimed 52 lives. It didn’t come up once. There is also no mention of it being a tribute in the official media guide of the opening ceremony.

The confusion seems to lie within a video tribute that showed pictures of victims and asked the crowd to pause for a moment of silence for “friends and family who could not be here tonight.” Khan’s performance began right after that, confusing viewers and reporters as to whether it was part of the tribute.

However, Khan’s failure to mention the dance being any kind of dedication would suggest that it was not part of the tribute. Nevertheless, NBC has yet to explain why it was cut.

There has been so much outrage over the cut performance, as well as many other moments that were hacked for American viewing, that the hashtag #NBCfail was trending on Twitter after the opening ceremony.

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Onstage, we were treated to Petronio’s version of Steve Paxton’s “Intravenous Lecture,” composed in protest against censorship of a nude dance work. Petronio told a riveting story about being jailed in London for wearing an obscene homoerotic T-shirt. He did this hooked up to an IV drip, dancing as he talked.

His 2002 work “City of Twist,” with costumes by Tara Subkoff/Imitation of Christ and graphic projections by Ken Tabachnick, retrieved the tortured psychology of Manhattan in the months after 9/11, featuring the astonishing Davalois Fearon spiraling in a shredded white dress.

Wendy Whelan performed “Ethersketch I,” a brief bauble welcoming the New York City Ballet star to the modern world.

The season’s premiere, “The Architecture of Loss,” had a complex new score played live by Icelandic composer Valgeir Sigurdsson. Knitted costumes by Gudrun and Gudrun and projections by Ravi Rajan of artwork by Rannvá Kinoy created a translucent environment surrounding stillness and movement. Petronio gives us much to look at and think about. 

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“I’ve had a writing practice for the last 13 years,” she says. “Two Huts” has expanded her approach to performance, immersing her with actors Tom Caylor and Todd Jefferson Moore, as well as her longtime company member and colleague Debra Wanner. “I’m integrating this approach to language with movement, dance, even light,” she says.

Known as a madcap experimentalist during her 15-year career here, Skura’s extending herself in the new piece. “It’s deep with a lot of wordplay; it goes from serious and moving to kind of silly,”?she says. “It’s been in­ter­esting for me to direct; I’ve had to video rehearsals and be rigorous about directing myself.”

Skura and her colleagues have a combined age of about 240. “We’re all still extremely active. It’s remarkable to bring that much experience and history together,” she says. “We live in alternate universes; we have whole conversations that are more like conversations with ourselves. We voice each other’s thoughts; we write our world into existence. A line in our journal will appear on the stage, to create a door or a wall or a window. Some of it’s really funny; it has to do with very long lives.”

Audiences in Seattle were captivated by the vocally athletic piece last month. One critic described a journey “from hysterical to somber and many places in between.”

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Returning home, Jin had sexual reassignment surgery, and she now runs a dance troupe based in Shanghai, choreographing in styles ranging from Isadora Duncan to Pilobolus, with stops in between at Humphrey-Weidman, Martha Graham and various tropes of Chinese dance including billowing scarves and dazzling cartwheels. Living as a woman with a husband and three adopted children, and still dancing in her mid-forties, she’s something of a celebrity in China.

Her 11-part show at the Joyce has its pleasures, but feels more like a competent college-modern concert than an exploration of any particular aesthetic. Jin seems out of touch with the last 20 years of dance development, relying on sentimental imagery (a ballerina spinning atop a music box; a fraught family drama featuring a woman torn between her violent husband, her anxious lover and her child) and props like bicycles rather than innovative movement design. Her men are often bare-chested, her women bare-legged.

Recorded music from Astor Piazzolla to Dead Can Dance accompanies this pastiche, concluding with a stilted number for guys on bikes and girls in evening gowns, racing around to a Strauss waltz.  Still celebrating the Year of the Dragon? You could do it here.
 

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A process film, “Going Somewhere,” features Wayne McGregor, the cyborg-like resident choreographer at the Royal Ballet who also directs his own Random Dance. Teaching high-schoolers, rehearsing ballet stars or conferring with scientists, he unveils aspects of the artist’s life.

Most selections are documentaries, with talking heads and clips of performance. “Check Your Body at the Door,” 20 years in the making by producer Sally Sommer and director Charles Atlas, pokes its camera into clubs, focusing on the people who make this social scene the center of their lives. “Never Stand Still” details the history and development of the venerable Jacob’s Pillow dance festival.
“Joffrey Ballet: Mavericks of American Dance” does the same for the Joffrey, tracking its trajectory over more than half a century.

“Balanchine in Paris” documents aging French ballerinas transmitting the Balanchine mystique to young dancers. “The Space in Back of You” peers into the mind and slo-mo methods of Robert Wilson.

There’s also drama: Wendy Whelan lights up “Labyrinth Within,” a mysterious drama by Pontus Lidberg, while two anxious men struggle in Clara van Gool’s “Coup de Grace.”

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Onstage, a white dance floor, tilted sideways, has a high lip at its back end. Green tape makes tracks here, too, among a few marks of blaze orange.  The rear wall looks like a topographical map of a desert landscape, or a political diagram of gerrymandered election districts. Four musicians, including composer Hahn Rowe, cluster upstage, twittering and droning, occasionally erupting into crescendos of sound.

Six tall performers gambol on the floor, often in pairs moving in unison, circulating around triangular blaze-orange flags. Dancer James McGinn wears a flag on a tall pole attached to his body, creating a marvelous effect as he runs and bounces.

Then a large white box, the size of a ’50s television, rolls into the space, stolidly crossing the floor and tipping its way over the lip at the back. The gifted dancers continue to noodle around, ignoring the new arrival. We’re riveted by the box, which is marking its own path with dribbles of blaze orange tape. It actually attaches some performers to the floor.

Jasperse himself stands looking bemused, as if waiting for more mysterious arrivals from outer space or the edge of the desert. Tony Orrico designed the production, and his vision threatens to overwhelm the choreography. The last thing we see, after the curtain calls, is Mr. Box, center stage, still leaking his orange lines.

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The Forsythe Company
Oct. 26-29, 7:30 p.m.
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, $20-$70,
718-636-4100,
www.bam.org
William Forsythe, longtime expat choreographer, brings his Frankfurt-based troupe to Brooklyn in “I don’t believe in outer space,” incorporating themes from the lyrics of pop songs. His 18 dancers balance on the edge of beyond.

Fall for Dance
Oct. 27-Nov. 6, New York City Center, 135 W. 55th St.,
$10, 212-581-1212
www.nycitycenter.org
This preview of coming attractions includes performances by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Australian Ballet, Israel’s Vertigo Dance Company, the Joffrey, and 16 other troupes, four at a time for two weeks. Box office opens Oct. 2; move fast to land bargain tickets!

Chunky Move
Nov. 2-6, Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., $10-$49,
212-242-0800,
www.joyce.org
The first of two Australian troupes brings the local premiere of “Connected,” by Gideon Obarzanek, in which the dancers construct sculptor Reuben Margolin’s set in real time. The following week in the same house, Sydney Dance Company shows two pieces by new artistic director Rafael Bonachela, to music by Ezio Bosso. 

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Taking a central role in the four-hour event is choreographer Kimberly Bartosik, a veteran of nine years with Merce Cunningham’s company.  In addition, her “I like penises: a little something in 24 acts” will be performed Sept. 22-24 at the Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church.

“I started thinking about how you become attached to things, about the act of giving, how certain objects pop out of your life and you carry them around with you. What do we like?” she wonders. “I wanted to create a title that would make you really think about that.”

Long interested in collaborating with visual artists, Bartosik recruited Jonathan Allen, who will build a set out of cheap objects purchased by the dancers at 99-cent stores. “It’s really exciting: Allen’s movement, how he is, how he moves with his materials,” Bartosik says. “I was looking at how things acquire value, the act of accumulation.”

She’s been thinking about the value of dance, the value of art, and how they’re valued differently. “I watched two seasons of ‘So You Think You Can Dance.’ How did this show become so popular? Who are these people dancing? We spend much more time listening to the judges and watching them emote than we do watching the dancing!”

Bartosik’s  “Ecsteriority3” is part of Saturday’s festival launch, which starts at 2 p.m. and includes new works by several other artists, talks, and walks on Museum Mile and in Central Park.

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 “Flock,” to a mash-up of Stravinsky scores, managed to sap the energy in the music while displaying the well-toned abs of the dancers. A dozen young men and women keep changing from tiny black briefs to black tutus to red briefs to red tutus. Choreographer Gigi Caciuleanu, responsible also for the costumes, puts them through acrobatic paces, but the piece remains scattered, too quiet and too badly lit to have real impact.

Dany Bittencourt’s “ABACADA” promised more light, with a bright projection on the back wall and more bare skin, but what emerged from this fusion of choreography and improvisation resembled a romp on the beach, with slack design outclassed by Andre Mehmari’s allusive music.

Monday evening’s performance closed with the new “Calunga,” Rui Moreira’s effort to “establish a dialogue between the past and the present in order to build a future.” The lovely dancers seemed to fuse Vegas routines with carnival energy — hot pink lighting — and a scene right out of Jerome Robbins’ “The King and I”; they mobilized a glittery blue tarpaulin to symbolize the ocean and played around and in it. But the choreography was bland.

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Four New York City high school students spent their summer experimenting with roaches at Cooper Union, teaching New York’s most hated insect to “dance” to popular music.

Under the tutelage of neuroscience professor Rob Uglesich, the students used remote controls to send electric signals to the bugs’ antennae. To make the roach go right, the students stimulate the left antenna.

The roach perceives the electric currents as some sort of obstacle — say, a wall — and scurries the other way.

The students performed surgery on the roaches, knocking them out with anesthesia before inserting electric receptors into their antennae, as well as their bodies.

Unfortunately, simple electric pulses became ineffective after about 10 minutes. The solution? Music.
“The roaches learn to ignore the same sequence of signals,” said Uglesich. “Music has more variation to it, so it keeps them moving. A house drum beat would bore them very quickly.”

The students altered devices on the roaches to connect to their iPods or computers, letting the insects directly tune in to top hits.

“To get the best results, we have to use a strong bass,” said student Dumichel Harley, 15. “They liked it.”

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Anna, played Monday by Diana Vishneva, showed off her limpid technique; all dancers  on stage had remarkable, fleet feet, with prominent arches. Many of them are very tall and all are a pleasure to watch.

And although “Anna Karenina” was only onstage for three nights during the famed group’s brief engagement, you can still catch the Mariinsky Ballet on Saturday in another one of  Ratmansky’s works, “The Little Humpbacked Horse,” based on a Russian fairy tale, and a double bill featuring choreographers Alberto Alonso’s “Carmen” and George Balanchine’s “Symphony in C.”

Mariinsky Ballet
Through Saturday
Metropolitan Opera House
Lincoln Center; 212-721-6500
$20-225; www.lincolncenterfestival.org

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Chun himself recycles images from popular culture, and Moss integrates audience members into his piece. Watching the hour-long work is like coming upon characters from “Lost.” First the six performers quietly invite a dozen paying customers to sit onstage.

Like a beached sea-creature, Aaron Hodges slowly propels himself on his stomach. Kacie Chang and Sari Nordman, functioning like flight attendants, lead them into a heap. The women stand before the “volunteers” and bathe themselves with yellow flower petals. The voice of combat photographer Michael Kamber narrates tales of battlefield atrocities. The men strip one guy, then the volunteers are encouraged to comfort the naked man while cast members hold poses taken from Chun’s sculptures. It’s all a big mess, but it’s hard to look away.

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Rebecca Serrell Cyr launches the hour-long display by strumming an electric bass and then dons huge metallic epaulets and headgear, channeling Cleopatra or some ancient goddess. Natalie Green wears and snuggles scraps of fur, while Rebecca Wender covers her black undergarments with a black coat. Molly Poerstal starts out in a long plaid summer dress ripped at the bottom to allow freedom of movement.

Sometimes the room feels like a fashion runway and these dames like models run amok. Other times their organized patterns feel almost military: They march and turn, splay their legs, stomp and tremble and stare. A painted platform that almost fills the room puts them just above our line of sight. They ignore us, and they clearly control the situation.

What’s going on here? Spradlin, one of the bravest choreographers of her generation, seems to be testing the possibilities, letting us witness, up close, the transformation of conventionally pretty young things into powerful icons. Other times she wants us to see them as they exist in their most private moments.

Burt Bacharach’s 1962 hit “Don’t Make Me Over” shares the airspace with recorded works by Krzysztof Penderecki. Jennifer Goggans, herself a performer, designed the costumes. By no means conventional entertainment, “beginning” broadens the definition of dance.

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So it’s no surprise that “Mambo 3XXI,” which opened the enduring troupe’s two-week Joyce season, fuses 21st-century pop dance and the mid-1900s “teen” stylings of Robbins.

George Cespedes and his 21 casually dressed dancers combine energetic minimalism (marching, pacing, jumping up and down) with hip-hop and jazz combinations, including a sequence of quick duets that come as a treat after all the solo action. Finally, the loud, recorded score quiets down and some relaxed partnering wins our hearts; the audience stands and cheers.

Program A also includes “Casi-Casa” a mysterious narrative work by Sweden’s Mats Ek. A smoking stove, a door and a chair share the stage with a series of dramatic dances, the scariest of which involves a baked baby. A chorus of women wielding fake vacuum cleaners attempts step-dancing to bagpipe music. A man in a hat sulks in the lounge chair until a woman shows him out.

Strands of striped tape (a Cuban crime scene?) preside over a pause in the action, but all of these vignettes just never add up. The dancers attempt speaking, but we can’t quite hear them. This work verges on incoherence.

A second bill, opening Friday and alternating with Program A through May 22, features a world premiere by Pedro Ruiz, a 40-year-old dance by Eduardo Rivero to Cuban Yoruba music and another large-scale work by Rafael Bonachela, from 2007. 

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We’re not quite sure what the deal is with Trevor, an apple-cheeked young lad who films himself dancing in Apple stores — is he, as New York mag asks, a viral marketer? —but even we have to admit, he’s quite good.

Trevor first came to our attention this morning, with a video from last November in which he dances to the Black Eyed Peas (we didn’t say he had good taste). What really won us over is the way he brushes off the scorn of the girl in the chinchilla hat behind him:

And, of course, there’s a little bit of Gaga:

Here he is dancing to a song by an artist who may be younger than him:

And, to complete the cycle, here he is dancing to "Friday":

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This season’s series includes nine emerging artists and a pair of more experienced participants. The Saturday bill includes a tentative, impressionistic duet by Mexican-American choreographer Miguel Anaya with Saul Ulerio (who also designed the score, a mix of natural sounds and soft music). Daisuke Omiya performed a mystifying, multipart dance; he swirled and rolled and swiveled his feet on a salted platform.

Some pieces, overshadowed by the loud lyrics of their recorded accompaniment, were less obscure but equally exasperating. Marguerite Hemmings’ “x/y/z like me,” billed as a work in progress, mobilized five women in floaty jumpsuits to music by foul-mouthed female rapper Nicki Minaj. Efeya Sampson struggled with emotional concerns while Gil Scott-Heron sang “Pieces of a Man.”

Mid-career artist Johari Mayfield mounted an ambitious historical tour of sexual display — “Venus Riff,” moderated by top-hatted Svengali Mils James — that began in the 19th century and finished with visions of young Angela Pope selling her body to satisfy her pimp (also James), and women in garish red underthings undulating to a grim song about lip gloss.
Friday’s program includes work by tap dancer Maurice Chestnut, Philadelphia hip-hop veteran Brandon “Peace” Albright, Maria Bauman, Otis Donovan Herring, Marianne Kim and Will Bond. 

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He demanded the music of Nick Cave and enlisted videographer Mike Daly, who provides images of clouds and flame, explosions punctuating music and movement.  His longtime costumer Tara Subkoff outdoes herself here, wrapping the dancers in, by turns, sparkly black, red tutus and cotton fatigues.

The result is a riot of sound and visual stimuli in which the moving bodies, though extraordinary, are sometimes overmatched. It’s hard to pay attention to so many things at once; the video is bigger and brighter than the mere humans onstage, and Ken Tabachnick’s lighting favors the screens over the people. Cave’s lyrics toggle between hymn and profanity.

But as the hour-long piece proceeds, we get used to the clutter and hone in on the bare legs of the ensemble, from elegant solos to the provocative quartet in which men and women grope all their partners.

At last, for the ensemble rendition of Cave’s “Death is Not the End,” the screens go quiet as all eyes track the performers in Subkoff’s flame-like shreds of red. The bombast subsides, and we concentrate on Petronio’s choreography and the transcendent dancing.

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Nominally a modern dance company, Morris’ troupe is ballet-trained. Though they dance barefoot, the performers — sturdy women and fluent, pliant men — offer us precise steps and powerful feelings to serious music, beginning with a startling suite of Irish and Scottish folk songs arranged by Beethoven.

“Petrichor,” Morris’ first composition for an all-female cast, sets eight women in motion to a Heitor Villa-Lobos string quartet. Wearing floaty baby-doll tops over gray trunks, they execute powerful, swivel-hipped crosses, reminiscent of fencers or even tango dancers.

“Festival Dance” features gals in circle skirts and guys in Henleys; their outfits might have come from the Eddie Bauer catalog, but their actions draw on all the resources of American dance, from reels to jitterbug, displaying a kaleidoscope of satisfying patterns.

To music by Austrian composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel (a student of Mozart’s), a dozen dancers turn the notion of a “hop” into a tour through two centuries of dance strategies. Lines form in the wings and barrel across the stage; moving in circles, men lift women and women steer men.

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Brow’s generation began by stripping dance to its essentials — space, time, action — and slowly added back the comforting extras, often collaborating with strong postmodern visual artists. Robert Rauschenberg was her partner on “Foray Foret,” designing culottes of gold and sheer fabrics and proposing the sound score, classic marches performed by a live band roaming hallways behind the stage. Nine dancers float in the space, moving in and out of unison, not to the music but alongside it.

Here and in “For M.G.: The Movie,” they are emissaries from another era, the last moment before the Internet fractured our attention and put the world at our fingertips, making it harder to concentrate on extended ideas. The dancers are earthbound until they suddenly seem to fly, lifted by others or their own momentum. Alvin Curran’s score combines recorded sound with live noodlings on a grand piano at the back of the deep Dance Theater Workshop stage.  

Longtime troupe member Neal Beasley is the first other person to perform Brown’s silent signature solo “Watermotor,” a 1978 tour de force, less than three minutes long, that demonstrates the potential for liftoff in her gently released cursive movements. Take them in.

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Eilber is seeking “a feeling of American space,” she says, and to reveal how Graham “found a way to make thoughts visible and change time onstage.”

Since 1996, Graham’s outsize personality has been channeled through Richard Move, the 6-foot-4 performer who has represented her on club and concert stages.

“Martha will not leave me alone,” Move says of the dancer/choreographer, who died in 1991. “The 92nd St. Y archivist found the audio transcript of an onstage interview between dance critic Walter Terry and Graham from March 31, 1963. I got so excited by this historic moment,” he enthuses. “We’re taking it to a whole new level, with the dancers and a design element that’s Noguchi-inspired.”

In addition to Move’s performance as Graham in the recreation of that interview at Dance Theater Workshop, the gender envelope is further pushed as Tony-nominated actress and playwright Lisa Kron portrays Terry. “People will get inside [Graham’s] brain, visualized in a theatrical way,” Move says. “There are moments of levity and moments of darkness; she reveals things I’ve never heard her say before.”

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But in the never-ending search for fitness fun, nothing has captured the imagination of the workout world quite like Zumba, the dance-exercise craze that has gym floors bounding with Latin sounds.

Incorporating Latin and international music styles — such as salsa, meringue, flamenco and belly dancing — Zumba emphasizes fun and appeals to a wide range of participants.

“The reason why Zumba is such huge phenomenon is that it uses very fun and uplifting rhythms to create a dance-fitness workout,” said Victoria Garcia Drago, a Boston-area Zumba instructor. “The benefit is that you are having so much fun that you don’t even notice you are working out so hard and burning so many calories.

“Once they started adding the Zumba classes to the schedule it just boomed, and it started to appear everywhere,” Drago said. “If you go to a traditional exercise class, they make you repeat the same thing over and over and it becomes boring. Zumba is a lot more creative and fun as far as the music as well as the moves, so people find it more appealing.”

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Brown fuses African styles with contemporary sensibility. He makes liturgical dance of the highest order; at its center is always a relationship to God and community. His pieces are usually per­formed to music with words; powerful moments in the 1995 “Lessons: Exotica/Harm to the Danger­ous,” are accompanied by a recording of Civilla D. Martin’s glorious lyrics to “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” In the new “On Earth Together” to songs by Stevie Wonder, the dancers actually touch each other; their behavior is sensuous without being lewd.  

The barefoot perform­ers, of many sizes and shapes, move their arms and torsos with great fluency, carving space, exposing chests that seem to reach toward heaven. This season Brown brings into the company’s repertory “Ife/My Heart,” made for the Ailey company in 2005; on his own troupe it looks absolutely exquisite.

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The festival, running now at sites around Manhattan, trots out its big guns Friday through Tuesday at Lincoln Center. Among the best is “Bödälä,” a Swiss production exploring percussive dance — from the rustic to the highly theatrical — as it enhances the lives of several generations of citizens. The provocative “Dancing Dreams” celebrates the late Pina Bausch, mounting her early “Contacthof” on a group of German teenagers. Both these films and most of the others are subtitled.

“The Last Tightrope Dancer in Armenia” chronicles the demise of a celebrated art form, as elderly practitioners struggle to train an heir. Two docs about French ballerina Claude Bessy will mainly attract insiders, while the energetic “Ebony Goddess,” foregrounding black aesthetics in Bahia, Brazil, should charm everybody. “All the Ladies Say,” another bunch of talking heads and a rare American contribution, worries the question of women in break dancing.

“Passion: Last Stop Kinshasha,” filmed in German, French and English, follows a Belgian troupe as it stages Bach’s "St. Matthew Passion" in Congo, documenting the response of African spectators watching their countrymen perform the classical masterwork. Carlos Saura’s stunning “Flamenco Flamenco” avoids the translation issue: It’s all music and dancing, brilliantly art-directed, with nary a spoken word. 

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Her fine dancers build personal shrines out of traffic cones, plastic jugs and personal detritus; one structure features Christmas lights, another an electric fan.  Several people offer powerful solos. The Gould recordings are intercut with random bits of other music. The piece ultimately blacks out, as if Miller simply couldn’t finish.

The score for Sidra Bell’s “POOL” consists of 12 different pieces of noisy contemporary music, much of it sung in German; the 40-minute work has an epigraph from yet another band. There may have been compelling dancing in it, by a cast of seven, but it was hard to tell; Vincent Vigilante’s lighting would suit a disco more than a dance theater. As a result, the black-clad performers, wearing Alexandra Johnson’s shiny tights and sparkly tops, are rarely fully visible. “POOL” evokes a nightmare not unlike “Black Swan.”

The dancers mostly move alone; when they touch they usually approach one another from behind. Bell has a theme here, something about a near-drowning, but submerging her piece in darkness doesn’t help it.

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