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Have you ever wanted to wrap yourself up in paper and call it a night? In ''Fold,'' Neta Pulvermacher, an Israeli-born choreographer with a wild imagination, did just that on Thursday evening at Danspace Project. More precisely, her dancers wrapped, and she spoke and sang. The new dance takes inspiration from a line by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze: ''We define the abstract machine as the aspect or moment at which nothing but function and matter remains.'' In this chaotic work, which Ms. Pulvermacher dedicates to her son, rolls of white paper and origami shapes that dancers fly like kites dominate the landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reviews the dance performance "Beasts and Plots," by Gwen Welliver and other dancers, performed at the New York Live Arts in New York.

The article reviews a dance performance by Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci at the show "Performa 07," at various locations in New York City.

The article reviews a dance performance by the Wally Cardona Quartet at the Dance Theater Workshop in New York City.

The article reviews the dance performance "We Failed to Hold This Reality in Mind," by Hooman Sharifi at the Norway in New York Festival held in New York.

Reviews several dance performances choreographed by Ornelas and MacFarlane and performed at the Washington Square Church. Includes the dance `Hereafter Therebefore'; `Volar'; `Everyday Dances.'

Ballet companies, like individual dancers, love to demonstrate how diverse they can be. So New York City Ballet, which began its six-week spring season with eight performances of high modernism (black-and-white costuming, no scenery, most of the music by Webern, Stravinsky and Hindemith), is now giving us a tribute to Broadway, with music by Richard Rodgers, Duke Ellington and Leonard Bernstein. Nobody in New York should be seriously surprised to find such fare at the ballet -- the links between ballet and musical theater have a richer track record here than anywhere else -- but on paper it's still fun to see that City Ballet can give us a program comprising works by three artists who each have been top Broadway choreographers: George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Susan Stroman. The two dead choreographers profited on Thursday night from vivid performances: notably from Maria Kowroski's sensational Striptease Girl in Balanchine's ''Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,'' from the 1936 musical ''On Your Toes,'' and young Chase Finlay's touchingly ardent Tony in ''West Side Story.'' An introduction, by the conductor Faycal Karoui, part of the company's See the Music series, entertainingly brought fresh insights into Bernstein's familiar score. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The dances of Jacqulyn Buglisi could be likened to a powdery musk. At first her work gives off an antique allure, but over time that bouquet turns into something oppressive. She sprays it on thick. In the two works her Buglisi Dance Theater presented Tuesday night at the Joyce Theater -- ''Requiem'' from 2001 and ''Letters of Love on Ripped Paper,'' a premiere for 18 dancers -- she demonstrates her usual sensual depiction of female characters. A former member of the Martha Graham Dance Company, she punctuates sharp movement -- a contraction drives the back to twist in angst -- with a dreamy, floating quality. Arms rise and frame the face to show longing, headiness, joy or despair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If you had $10,000 to burn, which choreographer would you choose to support? This is the premise of ''The A.W.A.R.D. Show!,'' though the title doesn't refer to the cash prize but is instead a rather torturous acronym: Artists With Audiences Responding to Dance. I'm not sure I know what that means, but it sounds ominous. Over three nights at the Joyce SoHo, 12 choreographers vie for audience votes, which are cast on little paper ballots; on the fourth night, the three finalists' works are performed again: the winner gets $10,000 and the runners-up $1,000 each. The other nine contestants, and their collaborators, walk away empty-handed. (It's an ugly downside to this contest, especially given that dancers and choreographers are rarely adequately compensated for their labor; even $10,000 quickly begins to seem like a small number when you do a realistic accounting of the hours and costs associated with making a piece.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

''Here Rests Peggy,'' a new work by Ivy Baldwin Dance, was drawn from several disparate sources: German Expressionist film, Peggy Guggenheim's extravagant life and art collection, and, as the news release puts it, ''the constant crashing of the Ligurian Sea,'' which Ms. Baldwin encountered during a research fellowship in Bogliasco, Italy. On paper this is a rich, tantalizing mix. But ''Here Rests Peggy,'' which had its premiere on Wednesday night at the Chocolate Factory, only very intermittently hinted at the grandness that helped inspire it. Most of the hourlong dance cultivated a sly, arch demeanor, affecting a slick cleverness that didn't quite pass for humor or style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three ballets choreographed to violin concertos could have been a nice idea on paper but a bad one in practice. Amazingly, however, New York City Ballet's triple violin bill on Saturday night at the David H. Koch Theater offered not just a magnificent range of 20th-century scores by Barber, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, but also a dance program that seemed perfectly composed too. First came Peter Martins's ''Barber Violin Concerto'' from 1988, set to Samuel Barber's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (Op. 14). ''Barber'' demonstrates Mr. Martins's best attributes as a choreographer: a gift for ingenious partnering; an unpredictable responsiveness to the music; a craftsmanship in moving dancers around the stage. On Saturday he was served marvelously by his performers: Sara Mearns and Charles Askegard as the classical pair; Megan Fairchild and Jared Angle as the moderns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To attend an Andrea Marcovicci cabaret show is to participate in a communal rite in which it is tacitly understood -- at least during the duration of the performance -- that nothing today can match the magic and romance of old Hollywood and Broadway. An audience of a certain age agrees to gorge retrospectively on the illusions of youth from an era long before the proliferation of viral gossip and reality television. As the ceremonial priestess, Ms. Marcovicci plays a grand, smiling Hollywood hostess -- a Loretta Young-like figure -- throwing open doors to a rose-colored mythology. Her new show, ''Skylark: Marcovicci Sings Mercer,'' at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, a tribute to the songwriter Johnny Mercer, who would have turned 100 on Nov. 18 (Ms. Marcovicci turned 61 the same day), should perpetuate her reign as the queen of high-class cabaret nostalgia. At the opening-night show last week, Ms. Marcovicci, who is celebrating her 23rd year at the Oak Room, once again worked her wiles as a show-business medium channeling Olympian spirits. Mercer may have had a drinking problem -- when in his cups, she said, he once told Irving Berlin that he ''couldn't write his way out of a paper bag'' -- but it was a minor quirk in her otherwise hagiographic account of his life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Paradigm, the group formed 10 years ago by Gus Solomons Jr. with Carmen deLavallade and Dudley Williams, has always seemed like a good idea on paper. But this company, created for and by older dancers, hasn't always produced work equal to the talent. In the troupe's latest program, presented on Thursday at Dance Theater Workshop as part of the SummerDANZ series, Paradigm began with a bang: Kay Cummings's ''Stayin' Alive,'' set to the Bee Gees' disco hit of the same title. Mr. Solomons, Valda Setterfield and Mr. Williams, wearing hospital gowns and pushing IV stands, took shaky sideway steps across the stage. Occasionally pointing a tired finger in the style of John Travolta or flashing a manic grin, the dancers, notably the hilarious Ms. Setterfield, sparkled like vaudeville stars. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On paper the Ballet Across America season unfolding this week at the Kennedy Center is exciting, and it causes excitement in the theater too. On three triple-bill programs nine American companies are dancing one work apiece. This, since no choreographer is represented more than once, must have taken quite some planning. Which company gets to dance a Balanchine? A Robbins, Tharp, Tudor, Wheeldon? Once those five are represented, what does that leave for the other four companies? No 19th-century choreography is included. Some troupes are dancing borrowed repertory, others works by their resident choreographers. Since no single ballet includes every company dancer, which performers are to be cast and which left in the wings? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Netta Yerushalmy grew up in Israel. Lee Sher and Saar Harari were born there. All three create small, charged spaces on the stage of the Ailey Citigroup Theater in ''Out of Israel,'' part of the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival, first performed there on Thursday night. But they are very different worlds. Ms. Yerushalmy's ''Bilocale -- Come Closer Please,'' performed with Toni Melaas, opens strikingly. Ms. Yerushalmy paints Ms. Melaas's back with red strokes as Ms. Melaas sits on the floor tossing a lipstick case in her hands. Then Ms. Yerushalmy pushes Ms. Melaas down onto a piece of paper to produce stark, calligraphic images, which she then hangs from a rope across the front. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reviews the dance "Funny Papers," performed by Orion Duckstein and James Samson in New York City.

Reviews the dance `Funny Papers,' presented by Paul Taylor Dance Company at City Center in March 2001.

Reviews Keely Garfield's Sinister Slapstick's dance production `Paper Cuts' in New York City.