Aya Sato: transcendent intuition, sliding, placid, pure openness, generosity, beat dropping. Find her in Laurel Atwell’s “Private Conversations on Public Time,” at Dixon Place in September.

—Leslie Allison

Larissa Sheldon: epic, past-life goddess from Lesbos, stretching space and limb, warmth, playing in trees. Find her in the music video “Cry”by Cross, to be released this December.

—Leslie Allison

Cassie Mey: bold, dark coffee, considered resolution, rising, eyes, some kind of truth, lightning. Find her in Dean Moss’s “johnbrown” at The Kitchen in October.

—Leslie Allison

Vanessa Anspaugh: brings a gritty, in-your-face realness that almost makes you have to look away. Come watch a fearless body that fully understands
the complexity of its own choreographic container.

—Cassie Peterson

Addys Gonzalez: a versatile performer who enlivens whomever’s work he steps into. He transmits the full range of possible human affects with the ease of a seasoned expert.

—Cassie Peterson

Aretha Aoki: performs with abandon and an unequivocal commitment to any task at hand. She embodies tension, strife, triumph, and an occasional irony with an enduring deftness that has come to characterize her performance work.

—Cassie Peterson

Raja Feather Kelly: for having a presence and movement style quite unlike anyone else. Though he is fearless in the face of challenge, he approaches these same challenges with the utmost compassion for his collaborators and his environment.

—Ivan Talijanic and Risa Shoup

Benjamin Freedman: one of the newest members of the Mark Morris Dance Company approaches each piece with an astonishing physical dexterity.

—Madison Mainwaring

Latifa Laâbissi: creates some of the most powerful contemporary pieces in the feminist and post-colonial traditions, all of which are injected with a sense of humor.

—Madison Mainwaring

Shannon Gillen: for a fierce physicality and rigorous inquisitiveness in her work.

—Ivan Talijanic