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Year in Review | Dance

The dance world lost precious resources this year, as the recession and mortality took a toll.

The great modern dance choreographer Merce Cunningham, who changed not just dance but modern art, died, as did the great mambo and Latin dancer Pedro ``Cuban Pete'' Aguilar. The South Florida dance landscape shrank, as Miami's Ballet Gamonet and West Palm Beach's Ballet Florida both closed for lack of funds. Cutbacks were everywhere, in programs, staff, dancers, and dreams -- Miami City Ballet came back from a triumphant New York City run only to cut budget, dancers and live music. A Knight Foundation grant thankfully brought back the orchestra.

But dancers, choreographers and those who support them found ways to keep keep going and creating.

Miami Contemporary Dance Company: 10 years of imagination and innovation

When choreographer Ray Sullivan was a boy, he used to sit on the counter of his Italian grandmother's kitchen to watch her cook, fascinated by the spaghetti tossing in the pot of boiling water.

``I would say `The pasta is dancing,' '' says Sullivan, now 39. ``It was so amazing. There was no money, but all my aunts and uncles and relatives would come over, and somehow there would be food for everyone.''

That experience was the inspiration for one of Sullivan's rare comedic pieces, Nonna's Pasta Dances , in which he plays his grandmother in a tribute to happily extroverted Italian American families. This sense of wonder and determination has also helped Sullivan keep his Miami Contemporary Dance Company alive and thriving in an era when many modern dance troupes were struggling even before the economic downturn gutted arts funding.

Review | 'Deca Dance' fresh with variety of flavors

Deca Dance , the ever-changing collage that choreographer Ohad Naharin keeps remaking from his considerable body of dances. The version performed by the Batsheva Ensemble, the junior troupe from Israel's Batsheva Dance Company, at the Adrienne Arsht Center on Saturday night was urgent and earnest, leavened by pop-club energy. While the program listed the names of the works from which Naharin selected sections for this particular edition of Deca Dance , the list of ingredients is not really the point -- each new mix has its own flavor.

That the 15 Batsheva Ensemble dancers are as young as 18 (like the wonderful Gon Biran, who kept the audience bemused and mesmerized with an extraordinary 15-minute improvisation at intermission) helped make Saturday's show terrifically fresh and focused -- these dancers really drew you in.

And Naharin used various devices to get the audience to pay attention to the moment. The evening started with a woman dancing in silence, with the house lights still up, so that

Choreographer Ohad Naharin is all about passion

Ohad Naharin has high, though exciting, expectations for the people who watch his dances -- something like those he sets for himself.

``I make dances for what I envision is the ideal audience member,'' the 57-year-old Israeli choreographer says from Tel Aviv, walking home to his girlfriend and their new baby after buying steak and goat milk yogurt. ``They have imagination, groove; they can pay attention to details without losing a sense of the whole. They're not disturbed by new experiences, they know a lot about themselves, they appreciate virtuosity and a multilayered task, and they're not too conservative. Things like that.''

Naharin says considerably less about Decadance , the changing collage of works that the Batsheva Ensemble, the training company for his world-renowned Batsheva Dance Company, will perform in its Miami debut Saturday and Dec. 6 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

Snapshots of South Africa

How could I absorb a country in a week? Especially one as complex and contradictory as this?

I couldn't. Dashing frantically from sensation to exotic sensation, at the peak of endurance every 18-hour day, I experienced the trip as a blur.

Looking back, my view is one not of deep understanding, but of a series of images -- intense, vivid, not always entirely in focus.