Dance.

This article focuses on the New York dance season. Choreographer George Balanchine's 1966 "Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet," revived by City Ballet this season with sumptuous décor by David Mitchell, has a meaning that unfolds as one watches it, independent of the idea that the ballet is set at the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire - the inspiration behind the new production. In "Nutcracker," the crossing snowflakes have more visceral excitement and the overlapping patterns of the flowers convey a poignant emotion.