Jookin and Other Special Performances of 2012

Travel Is Educational In a Year of the Move

THE links among dance, geography and social anthropology are complex and profound. Sooner or later much - by no means all - of the world's best dance comes to New York; some of it even blooms brighter here. Yet dance grows in meaning when we see it within its culture. Two trips I made this year opened my eyes and mind in life-enhancing ways.

Herman Cornejo in “The Dream,” one of his several memorable performances in 2012.

Bijayini Satpathy and Pavithra Reddy of the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble at the Joyce Theater.

The four weeks I spent in India in the spring began to show me the richness of Indian classical dance. I observed notably the Odissi genre, which derives from the east-coast state of Orissa, and the Bharata Natyam genre, which derives from the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu, within a society where dance is still central to culture and religion. Some of my adventures were bizarre, many enlightening; all of them left me feeling I was still only brushing the surface of these great idioms. But connections among dance, music, thought and history have kept growing ever since.

On my first evening in the country I saw the veteran Kathak master Pandit Birju Maharaj, celebrating his 74th birthday with prodigiously rhythmic footwork. He later performed in New York in October. I also spent time at the dance oasis of Nrityagram, whose eponymous dance company of superb Odissi stylists appeared at the Joyce Theater in March. Other highlights included attending the all-night dance festival at Chidambaram (the temple in Tamil Nadu most associated with dance) on the day when the god Shiva is worshiped as lord of the cosmic dance, and seeing the gotipuas (boys trained to perform female Odissi roles).

In November a journey to Memphis opened a drastically dissimilar world, that of jookin, the area's form of hip-hop featuring virtuoso footwork (often rising, in sneakers, onto a jookin version of point). Memphis jookin developed late in the last century; in the past two years it has won new attention in the exceptional person of Lil Buck. Many dancegoers, however, have still never seen it live. Having watched both the phenomenal Lil Buck (Charles Riley) and, in August, the enchanting Ron Myles, his cousin (at the Vail International Dance Festival), I felt the need to observe jookin in its Memphis context.

At a Y.M.C.A. in Jackson, Tenn., I watched a jookin “battle,” all to rap music. The vast array of upper- and lower-body movements showed how this is a genre teeming with new life; the many different steps on “point” alone extend our whole idea of masculinity in dance. (Women dance jookin too but are not central to the scene.) And at New Ballet Ensemble, also in Memphis, six young dancers (one of them a woman) demonstrated jookin to classical and other, even flamenco, music. The lyrical beauty with which Tajari Benson, known as T J, danced to Saint-Saëns's “Swan” was revelatory.

Even though the Merce Cunningham Dance Company closed at the end of 2011, Cunningham's work stayed in the vanguard this year. The extraordinary application for the iPad, “Merce Cunningham: 65 Years,” new in August and pictorially sensational, is a breakthrough achievement of combining visual and written history.

August, customarily a thin time for dance in the city, also brought two dance events that expanded my idea of America. At the Joyce Theater Trey McIntyre's “Oh, Inverted World,” performed to songs of the Shins by the Smuin Ballet, was an intoxicating portrait of the perplexities of young adults isolated within a group. And a wonderfully fresh open-air performance by Vanaver Caravan, “Pastures of Plenty,” honored the centennial of Woody Guthrie with dance that connected clogging (in particular), tap, soft-shoe, barefoot and acrobatic idioms to reveal American folk lines in movement.

Among a number of arresting performances of modern and postmodern choreography my memory singles out John Jasperse's “Fort Blossom revisited (2000/12)” at New York Live Arts in May. Its use of male nakedness was coolly unsensational in manner, seriously sensational in drama.

The superlative, exhilarating Argentine tango dancer Gabriel Missé made several appearances in New York in March and October with his new partner, Analia Centurión. She shares his sunniness, elegance and explosive wit; their performance at the Dardo Galletto Studios took the virtuosity of them both to fresh peaks. Their ardent compatriot Herman Cornejo, meanwhile, shone brightest of all the luminaries onstage at American Ballet Theater, in roles both old (Puck in Frederick Ashton's “Dream,” Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet,” Solor in “La Bayadère”) and new to him (the Baryshnikov role in Mark Morris's “Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes,” a solo in Alexei Ratmansky's new Shostakovich “ Symphony #9”); his sensuous intensity, mysterious versatility and heroic brilliance were, again and again, heart-catching.

August indeed proved an exceptional month. At the Vail festival the ballerina Carla Körbes (Pacific Northwest Ballet) was at her peak as a Balanchine stylist, gleamingly elegant in the “Agon” pas de deux (with the Royal Ballet's Eric Underwood), the “Midsummer Night's Dream” adagio and the rare 1982 “Élégie” solo. Since she was sharing the stage with Mr. Missé and Ms. Centurión, Mr. Myles, Mr. Cornejo and others, each performance was quite a cornucopia.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 16, 2012, on page AR8 of the New York edition with the headline: Travel Is Educational In a Year of the Move.