By Steve Sucato

2025 was a year of experimentation for me as a professional dance writer/reviewer. I launched a monthly Airings digest on my website, artsair.art, featuring select dance news, performance impressions, and upcoming event listings, and expanded my arts coverage to include more non-dance events. So, why not end the year with one more experiment, compiling best-of-2025 lists from the dance productions and dancer performances I experienced this past year?

The diversity of dance I witnessed and, in many cases, reviewed in 2025 was as creative and entertaining as it was wide-ranging. The task of singling out the most impressive was difficult. Every performance I attended offered something to take away as a viewer.

I decided to arrange my best-of-2025 lists differently from most. I list my top three picks in order, while the rest of the list is unranked and arranged by production release date. I have included links to the productions/performances I reviewed, along with brief descriptions of the others. 

BEST REGIONAL DANCE PRODUCTIONS

1) Tulsa Ballet – Alice in Wonderland
2) Grand Rapids Ballet – Sherlock
3) BalletMet – West Side Story

• Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre – Romeo and Juliet 
February 14, 2025
Benedum Center, Pittsburgh, PA
A contemporary dance approach to Shakespeare’s classic story of two star-crossed lovers, choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Romeo and Juliet, unfolds through the recollections of Friar Laurence, confidante to Romeo and Juliet, who is guilt-stricken by their deaths and by his role in them. Danced to Sergei Prokofiev’s iconic music for the ballet, played with passion by the PBT Orchestra, PBT’s dancers shone in the brilliantly emotional and introspective ballet. Of particular note were Grace Rookstool as Juliet, Colin McCaslin as Romeo, Emry Amoky as Mercutio, David O’Matz as Tybalt, and Corey Bourbonniere as Friar Laurence.
• CorningWorks – STAND BY — an allegory 
• Dancing Wheels – Rodeo’ Reimagined
• Ohio Contemporary Ballet – Director’s Choice
June 21, 2025
Cain Park’s Evans Amphitheater – Cleveland Heights, OH
The company’s annual free performance at Cain Park celebrated the retirements of longtime company dancers Kate Webb and Antonio Morillo. The beloved dancers performed with skill, passion, and verve in several works they handpicked from the company’s repertoire including Webb as a sultry and slinky jazz singer from an iconic 1940s era trio in Heinz Poll’s “Eight by Benny” (1992), Morillo as the central figure in Poll’s bullfighter-themed “Bolero,” and the two performing together in the closing section of OCB Associate Artistic Director Richard Dickinson’s “Four Last Songs” (2013), a ballet about loss and longing and the acceptance of death as a peaceful transition.
• Chamber Dance Project – Red Angels
• Inlet Dance Theatre at Cain Park
• Cleveland Ballet – Dracula & Code of Silence
October 24-25, 2025
Mimi Ohio Theatre – Cleveland, OH
A program dedicated to the late choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett, who died in January 2025, it featured the return of her one-act Halloween thriller from last season, Dracula. A ballet adaptation of Bram Stoker’s gothic horror novel, the ballet is a well-crafted, wonderfully paced, and condensed version of the Dracula story. It was paired this year with another of Corbett’s ballets, the poignant and moving Code of Silence (2008). Themed about the tortured souls of former prisoners of war or political prisoners. It was set to heartachingly beautiful music by composer Arvo Pärt. Of the ballets the company has presented since Timour Bourtasenkov took over as Artistic Director, Code of Silence is the best of the few contemporary dance works the company has presented. October 25th’s cast, led by dancer Johan Mancebo, was spectacular. For a ballet company that is methodically raising its profile in the dance world, more contemporary works of the caliber of Code of Silence are needed to reach the next level.
• Abrepaso Flamenco – Ni más/ni menos
November 20, 2025
The Cultural Arts Center at Disciples Christian Church
Cleveland Heights, OH
A coming together of two veteran performers who exemplify the very best of their chosen dance genres in Northeast Ohio, Ni más/ni menos showcased the polished talents of Cleveland Arts Prize-winning contemporary dancer Felice Bagley and Cleveland Flamenco Queen, Alice Lawhorn. Joined by multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire Adam Ben Ezra, the evening-length work was choreographed by Bagley and Lawhorn, with a contribution by Sevilla, Spain-based Flamenco artist Cristina Hall. Perhaps the finest work I’ve seen under the Abrepaso Flamenco banner, it was divided into multiple sections that began with two women bound back-to-back by a white fabric wrap, working together to navigate a stepping dance phrase around the stage, surrounded on three sides by audience members. The pair then performed solos and duets, blending contemporary dance and Flamenco, with the women’s alternating bravura solos increasingly leaning into their dance strengths. The result was a brilliantly performed and entirely satisfying dance work.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

• BalletMet – Sleeping Beauty
• Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre – The Wizard of Oz
• CHRISTINA LINDHOUT & ARTISTS – our knees hurt 
• Ohio Contemporary Ballet – Honoring Heinz Poll

BEST TOURING/STREAMING PRODUCTIONS

1) Houston Ballet
2) Dutch National Ballet
November 20-22, 2025
New York City Center, New York, NY
What can you say about one of the world’s premier ballet companies returning to New York after a 40-year absence? Killer dancing met a diverse mix of new and classic dance works that was fabulous. The company presented two programs with works by outgoing company Artistic Director Ted Brandsen, Alexei Ratmansky, Wubkje Kuindersma, Jerome Robbins, Mthuthuzeli November, Jiří Kylián, and Dutch national hero Hans van Manen, who passed away shortly after the tour on December 17, 2025. Some of my colleagues were disappointed by the company’s choice of repertoire, hoping for something new and earth-shattering. Not having seen the company live or many of the ballets on the program, I found most of them to be well-crafted and exquisitely danced. If only Amsterdam were closer to Cleveland, I would revel in seeing the company every week. 
3) Pacific Northwest Ballet – Emergence

• Twyla Tharp Dance – Diamond Jubilee Tour 
• Maria Caruso – Incarnation
• Raphael Xavier – Skiff
• Malandain Ballet Biarritz  – Les Saisons 
• David Roussève/REALITY – Becoming Daddy AF
September 26 & 27, 2025
Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Pittsburgh, PA. 
Celebrated dance-theater artist David Roussève/REALITY presented the world premiere of Becoming Daddy AF, his first full-length solo in over 20 years. A powerful meditation on life’s purpose, blending 600 years of ancestral genealogy, from France, Portugal, Germany, Mali, Senegal, Haiti, and Cuba, with Roussève’s journey living with HIV and the profound loss of his husband of 26 years. The exquisitely crafted solo show was a tour de force of virtuosity for the 64-year-old and a moving portrait of a queer African American man defying death while struggling to embrace the fullness of life. 
• Compagnie Hervé KOUBI – Sol Invictus
September 30, 2025
Byham Theater, Pittsburgh, PA
The French company made its Pittsburgh debut in the 70-minute Sol Invictus, named after the “invincible sun” deity. Blending martial arts, hip-hop, and street dance with contemporary styles, the company of 18 multicultural dancers was spectacular. Dancers spun on their heads and hands, while others engaged in funky unison dance riffs. Danced to a score by Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson, with excerpts by Steve Reich and digital composer Maxime Bodson, Sol Invictus marked the first time choreographer Hervé Koubi featured a mixed-gender cast in place of an all-male one. Costumed in fashion-forward streetwear with a Middle Eastern feel by designer Guillaume Gabriel, the uber-talented cast looked like a futuristic GAP clothing commercial. The diversity of ethnicities, body types, and personal styles among the dancers on stage was striking, ranging from a dancer with only one leg to a Jason Momoa look-alike.
• Dianne McIntyre – In the Same Tongue 

BEST PERFORMANCES BY A DANCER OR DANCERS

1) Olga Smirnova and Giorgi Potskhishvili, Dutch National Ballet
Partnered by Jacopo Tissi in both Jerome Robbins’ Other Dances (1976) and Hans Van Manen’s Adagio Hammerklavier, Olga Smirova was the epitome of ballet technique wrapped in grace and elegance. Her ability to span a range from delicate beauty to eye-popping power and pace was on full display, as was her stage presence, which exuded ballet superstardom. An up-and-coming superstar in his own right, Giorgi Potskhishvili oozed machismo, power, and athleticism in Mthuthuzeli November’s Thando, alongside the brilliant Anna Tsygankova. That power and athleticism were then combined with boyish charm and wonderful comedic timing in Alexei Ratmansky’s Trio Kagel, performed with stellar comedic performances by dancers Lore Zonderman and Kira Hilli.
2) Aakash Odedra in Songs of the Bulbul
3) Emma McBride of Inlet Dance Theatre in Soon I Will Be Done

• Lloyd Knight – The Drama
• Nao Ota and Shi Jean Kim in Tulsa Ballet’s Alice in Wonderland
• Katharine Cowan in Cleveland Ballet’s Guernica
In conjunction with the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Picasso on Paper exhibit, Cleveland Ballet presented the program Impressions of Picasso on March 14 at the museum’s Gartner Auditorium. Inspired by Picasso’s dramatic painting Guernica, which depicts the horrors of war and its human toll, choreographer Attila Bongar’s ballet of the same name featured a riveting and passionate performance by Katharine Cowan as a woman in the throes of inner turmoil, distress, and shock. Her memorable performance lingered long after the program’s conclusion.
• Antonio Morillo and Kate Webb in Ohio Contemporary Ballet’s Director’s Choice (See description from above)
• Jaka Zakajinn in Charlie by Jack by Jaka 
• Nigel Tau and the cast of Grand Rapids Ballet’s Sherlock
• Tommie Lin Kesten and Colin McCaslin in Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s Dracula
Company principal dancers Tommie Lin Kesten and Colin McCaslin showed why they are among PBT’s top dancers in Michael Pink’s Dracula on Halloween night at Pittsburgh’s Benedum Center. As Dracula, McCaslin was creepy, vain, and seductive, holding both the characters in the ballet and the audience under his power, while Kesten did the same as the flirtatious, vivacious Lucy, who turned into a crazed, ravenous child-killing vampire.
• Melisa Guilliams and Elizabeth Murphy in Pacific Northwest Ballet’s The Window
Part of PNB’s production In the Upper Room, streamed November 20-24, choreographer Dani Rowe’s The Window took its inspiration from writer/filmmaker Diane Weipert’s 2015 Love + Radio episode “The Living Room,” a true story about a woman who watches a neighbor couple through their window. In it, Melisa Guilliams is a reluctant voyeur of the everyday life of a young couple portrayed by Christopher D’Ariano and Elizabeth Murphy. At first, she is jealous of the couple’s amorous outpourings, but, like watching a favorite television series, she becomes invested in their lives. When D’Ariano is felled by cancer, Guilliams and Murphy’s characters, apart but sympathetically together, express through their adroit dancing the devastation of loss, sorrow, and empathy that pierces the heart.
• Alice Lawhorn and Felice Bagley (See description from above)
• Albina Ghazaryan and Narek Martirosyan in Cleveland Ballet’s The Nutcracker
As the Sugar Plum Fairy and Cavalier, respectively, in Cleveland Ballet’s The Nutcracker this month, the pair were rock solid. The veteran pair performed their reserved Grand Pas De Deux choreography with steadiness, near-perfect precision, and the elegance befitting their characters. 

BONUS LIST: MY CLASSICAL MUSIC DISCOVERIES OF 2025

• Cleveland Institute of Music Concerts
• Cleveland Opera’s Opera in the Italian Cultural Garden 
• CityMusic Cleveland Concert Series
Performed at select churches throughout Cleveland, the free annual concert series is diverse, inviting, and full of great music and great performances.