Speaking in Dance

In Abby Zbikowski’s “Radioactive Practice,” a dancer says, “You’re seeing survival and community in real time.”

By Gia Kourlas

Watch a portion of “Drumfolk,” the Step Afrika! show now at the New Victory Theater.

By Gia Kourlas

Watch a portion of Keone and Mari Madrid’s “Beyond Babel.”

By Gia Kourlas

The New York City Ballet principal Daniel Ulbricht’s solo in this Justin Peck ballet is all about momentum — and clarity.

By Gia Kourlas

John Kelly plays the Devil in “L’Histoire du Soldat,” with choreography by Robert La Fosse.

By Gia Kourlas

Michael Trusnovec dances part of a solo in “Episodes” that George Balanchine made for Paul Taylor.

By Gia Kourlas

Watch a portion of Melinda Ring’s “Strange Engagements,” created from improvisations.

By Gia Kourlas

New York City Ballet principals Joseph Gordon and Lauren Lovette dance part of a pas de deux from Balanchine’s “Stravinsky Violin Concerto.”

By Gia Kourlas

Watch a portion of Camille A. Brown’s choreography for the production at the Metropolitan Opera.

By Gia Kourlas

Faye Driscoll performs the section of her piece “Space” that explores murder, death and mourning.

By Gia Kourlas

Jeroboam Bozeman of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater dances part of Jamar Roberts’s “Ode,” about the effects of gun violence.

By Gia Kourlas

Megan Fairchild of New York City Ballet performs a solo from “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker.”

By Gia Kourlas

Watch a portion of “New Work for Goldberg Variations,” a collaboration between Pam Tanowitz and Simone Dinnerstein.

By Gia Kourlas

Watch the tap masters Dormeshia and Jason Samuels Smith perform part of the introduction of their show at the Joyce Theater.

By Gia Kourlas

Eight students from the School of American Ballet are the polichinelles in “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” at City Ballet.

By Gia Kourlas

Mr. Dunne, an Irish dance artist, performs to the traditional music of Tommie Potts’s classic “The Liffey Banks.”

By Gia Kourlas

Slim Xtravaganza and Pony Zion give a spontaneous performance for #SpeakingInDance.

By Gia Kourlas

Sean Mahoney and Maria Ambrose perform part of a duet from “Scudorama” (1963).

By Gia Kourlas

Ms. Whelan, Maya Beiser and Lucinda Childs collaborated on “The Day.”

By Gia Kourlas

Calvin Royal III takes on the lead role of George Balanchine’s “Apollo” at American Ballet Theater.

By Gia Kourlas

Emilie Gerrity of New York City Ballet performs a portion of her solo from Merce Cunningham’s “Summerspace.”

By Gia Kourlas

Watch part of “Somewhere at the Beginning,” by Germaine Acogny, considered the mother of contemporary African dance.

By Gia Kourlas

In a in an exhilarating, diabolically difficult section of George Balanchine’s “Union Jack,” Ms. Mearns feels the power.

By Gia Kourlas

“I have to take everything that I’ve learned from him,” Annique Roberts says of this Brown solo. “For me it’s kind of a coming-of-age moment.”

By Gia Kourlas

For Gus Solomons Jr., puppets relate directly to dance: “There’s no real personality there, but as soon as they move, you see one.”

By Gia Kourlas

“Dancing underwater is a form of meditation,” says Claire Friesen, an actress and synchronized swimmer.

By Gia Kourlas

This year the Beach Sessions at Rockaway is about open classes, rather than performances.

By Gia Kourlas

“Maze,” at the Shed, uses the Brooklyn street dance known as Flex to explore social issues.

By Gia Kourlas

Portraying Durga, Ashrita Keshav dances on the rim of a brass plate: “The musicians perform and then I have to answer with my footwork and my hands.”

By Gia Kourlas

In this musical adaptation of Langston Hughes’s poem, Darius Barnes and Evan Tyrone Martin play the electrifying tap duo the Nicholas Brothers.

By Gia Kourlas

Watch Maria Kochetkova perform part of her solo “Degunino,” choreographed by Marcos Morau.

By Gia Kourlas

Watch Katherine Williams dance a variation in which Florine calls out to her love, Bluebird.

By Gia Kourlas

Laurel Lynch and Billy Smith dance a portion of the romantic duet from Mr. Morris’s transcendent work.

By Gia Kourlas

In “Untitled,” two women sometimes stand at twice their height. It’s “about society and outward appearance — and also what’s going on inside.”

By Gia Kourlas

“Everything in this art form is self-expression: That’s what voguing is.”

By Gia Kourlas

Watch a portion of Pam Tanowitz’s new dance — her first for an outdoor space — in which all the dancers, including Sara Mearns, have their own timing.

By Gia Kourlas

Watch Laura Halzack, who is retiring soon, dance part of her playful solo from Paul Taylor’s radiant “Brandenburgs.”

By Gia Kourlas

Dancers fall. Sometimes, it’s intentional.

By Gia Kourlas

In 1936, Graham choreographed this scorching response to the rise of fascism.

By Gia Kourlas

“Ballerinas never crash,” said Lauren Lovette, but, “I love falling to the floor.”

By Gia Kourlas

“You are the center of your own world. Any space is important,” the Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula told members of It’s Showtime NYC.

By Gia Kourlas

This number “represents pure dance,” said the “Kiss Me, Kate” choreographer Warren Carlyle, who lets it take as long as it takes (more than 10 minutes).

By Gia Kourlas

Anthony Huxley takes on the role of the King of the Faeries in George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

By Gia Kourlas

“It’s really slow and there’s a lot of stillness because stillness is basically my one true love,” Ms. Walsh says of this excerpt from “Fame Notions.”

By Gia Kourlas

“I’m this entity of rawness,” Gabrielle Hamilton said of the dance she performs in the Broadway show, choreographed by John Heginbotham.

By Gia Kourlas

In a new dance Mina Nishimura performs movement from a Merce Cunningham solo and then continues dancing with his spirit: “I’m meeting Merce through my body,” she said.

By Gia Kourlas

How does this solo in Mr. Ratmansky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” feel? “It’s like you’re chasing your feet,” says Indiana Woodward of New York City Ballet.

By Gia Kourlas

The tap dancer and choreographer’s new piece is part of City Center on the Move, a program to engage new audiences.

By Gia Kourlas

“You don’t entertain and perform for an audience,” the dancer Lloyd Mayor said of Martha Graham’s “Secular Games” (1962). “You’re in your playground and the audience happens to see it.”

By Gia Kourlas

This ensemble section comes toward the end of Michelle Dorrance’s “SOUNDspace,” part of Dorrance Dance’s program at City Center.

By Gia Kourlas

Originally created for male dancers, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s “Sombrerísimo” is now being performed by the company’s women.

By Gia Kourlas

Her project “Paramodernities” — an ambitious deconstruction of works by six canonical moderns — features this reimagined version of Nijinsky’s “Rite of Spring.”

By Gia Kourlas

Okwui Okpokwasili’s “Adaku’s Revolt,” a work for young audiences, focuses on a girl who challenges conventional beauty standards by choosing natural hair.

By Gia Kourlas

“It’s pretty scary”: Melissa Toogood and American Ballet Theater’s Calvin Royal III dance a difficult duet from Merce Cunningham’s “Scenario.”

By Gia Kourlas

Sara Mearns of New York City Ballet dances a portion of her role as the Siren in George Balanchine’s “Prodigal Son.”

By Gia Kourlas

The choreographer Camille A. Brown deftly uses the tradition of step to add “a heartbeat to the story” of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s musical play, now on Broadway.

By Gia Kourlas

Two dance teams go to war in “Battle! Hip-Hop in Armor,” part of It’s Showtime NYC’s residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

By Gia Kourlas

Watch a portion of Urban Bush Women’s “Hair & Other Stories,” a reimagining of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s “HairStories” (2001), with music by the Illustrious Blacks.

By Gia Kourlas

Watch part of a solo that Bianca Berman, 14, choreographed and will perform as part of Ellen Robbins’s “Dances by Very Young Choreographers.”

By Gia Kourlas

In her solo in George Balanchine’s “Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2,” City Ballet’s Teresa Reichlen said, she shoos the other dancers aside “because it’s my turn to dance.”

By Gia Kourlas

Mariaa Randall performs a segment of “Footwork/Technique” — part of First Nations Dialogues — showcasing aboriginal footwork from Australia.

By Gia Kourlas

The tango master Gabriel Missé and his partner Maru Rifourcat have danced together for a year and a half. Now, they’re a couple in real life too.

By Gia Kourlas

“I tried to be a good male dancer,” said Long Zou of the Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. “It took me a while to figure out that’s not what I’m good at.”

By Gia Kourlas

Watch New York City Ballet principal Daniel Ulbricht perform part of Candy Cane’s solo from “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker’

By Gia Kourlas

We went underwater to bring you the synchronized swimmers of the Manhattan Plaza Health Club performing a section of “Wish.”

By Gia Kourlas

Nicholas Sciscione dances a 2017 iteration of Mr. Paxton’s solo “Excerpts From Goldberg Variation.” “It’s about finding the Zen of being within the notes,” he says.

By Gia Kourlas

“It’s like I’m flying”: Jacqueline Green performs a portion of the luminous solo from Alvin Ailey’s “Lark Ascending.”

By Gia Kourlas

Dancing to music sung by Anthony Roth Costanzo “feels like something has airlifted me off the ground, like I could float up to the ceiling,” says Ron Myles.

By Gia Kourlas

The joyful finale of John Heginbotham’s “Fantasque,” set to music by Respighi, reminds the dancer Lindsey Jones of the “flowy freedom” of Isadora Duncan.

By Gia Kourlas

Arthur Pita's dance-drama “The Tenant” (yep, like the Polanski movie) features James Whiteside and Cassandra Trenary of American Ballet Theater.

By Gia Kourlas

His solo “XENOS,” about a colonial soldier in World War II, blends contemporary dance and the classical Indian form Kathak.

By Gia Kourlas

“Samhara Revisited” brings together two dance traditions: Odissi, a classical Indian form, and Kandyan dance from Sri Lanka.

By Gia Kourlas

Ms. Gerring’s new dance, “Field,” has an earthiness to its movement. “As much as we’re soaring and jumping,” the dancer Brandon Collwes said, “I always feel that I’m coming back to the ground.”

By Gia Kourlas

In Brown’s “Working Title" (1985), a dancer is lifted by a harness for an effect more human than ethereal.

By Gia Kourlas

Joaquin De Luz, who is retiring from New York City Ballet on Oct. 14, dances a portion of George Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations.”

By Gia Kourlas

RoseAnne Spradlin’s “Y” is a cyclical exploration of form: The movement repeats and changes its facing 8 times, so the dance is visible from multiple sides — like a sculpture.

By Gia Kourlas

The third movement of George Balanchine’s “Symphony in C” is for jumpers. “You’re supposed to shoot out and fly,” says Indiana Woodward of City Ballet, who dances here with Sebastian Villarini-Velez.

By Gia Kourlas

Yvonne Rainer’s 1963 “We Shall Run” is performed as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s show, “Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done.”

By Gia Kourlas

Thinking about what he feels is “a lack of nuance about how people talk about being black or being queer,” Raja Feather Kelly created “Black Queer Zoo.”

By Gia Kourlas

Ernesto Palma and Nikolai Shpakov show how competitive ballroom dance is enhanced, not diminished, by same-sex partnering.

By Gia Kourlas

“You kind of let go” to dance Biba Bell’s “Hustle on the Beach,” part of Beach Sessions Dance Series at Rockaway. Watch a portion.

By Gia Kourlas

The Bharatanatyam dancer Neha Mondal Chakravarty didn’t mind performing on a rainy city sidewalk: “Sometimes it’s about the bliss that you get in just exploring.”

By Gia Kourlas

Popmaster Fabel improvised this solo for us: “I’m basically freestyle popping — Electric Boogaloo style, and some other techniques that I’ve learned along the way.”

By Gia Kourlas

Watch Crystal Serrano and Da’Von Doane in a portion of Mr. Garland’s “New Bach,” created for Dance Theater of Harlem in 2001.

By Gia Kourlas

In this choreographic experiment, Will Rawls spells out a phrase from Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the Supreme Court’s travel ban decision.

By Gia Kourlas

In this segment, members of the Batsheva, the Young Ensemble break out of the line for fleeting, frantic solos.

By Gia Kourlas

Lucinda Childs’s 1983 collaboration with John Adams and Frank Gehry is “exceedingly fast” and “seeringly difficult.”

By Gia Kourlas

Watch the tap dancer Caleb Teicher perform a solo that samples female tappers, including Mable Lee and Ann Miller.

By Gia Kourlas

The Angel in “Angels in America” is supported by five shadows — at the sound of a whooshing exhale the puppeteers manipulate her wings while the dancers lift her into the air.

By Gia Kourlas

Audience members will watch Paloma McGregor’s “Building a Better Fishtrap/from the river's mouth” by boat. Here’s a portion of what they will see.

By Gia Kourlas