Alastair Macaulay for The New York Times

At every performance of the annual Fall for Dance Festival at City Center the atmosphere is terrific. The theater’s crowded, anticipation’s high, and the stylistic diversity of each program is marvelous. On Thursday, at this year’s first performance, many of us were also discovering happily just how many features of the recently reopened theater have been altered and refreshed. What remains is the immediacy of rapport between stage and auditorium: City Center remains an exciting dance house.

Leigh Witchell for New York Post

New Yorkers love culture, and we love a bargain even more. Combine them and you get Fall for Dance: five programs, 20 groups and each ticket only 10 bucks. No wonder it always sells out.

Emeri Fetzer for DancePulp

It is easy to get cynical about your art when you are in contact with it each day. But tonight at New York City Center‘s Fall For Dance Festival, I fell back in love with dance. But it was not just the obvious mushy feelings toward the art coming from the overtly enthusiastic FFD crowd; these were four solid voices, four entertaining works.

Chris Waddington for The Times-Picayune

Playing to a packed house at the Mahalia Jackson Theatre for the Performing Arts, Mark Morris Dance Group pulled off a jaw-dropping feat of magic on Saturday. In fact, make that three feats of magic, for this troupe of 18 dancers, a string quartet and a pianist delivered what is likely to be the best night of dance, the best night of classical music, and the best night of theater that New Orleans will see in the 2011-2012 season.