Is it possible for dance to make the world a better place? Or does dance, the most ephemeral of the performing arts, instead allow us a moment of escape and, at its best, transcendence? Can it make us feel optimistic, engaged, positive about ourselves? What impact does dance make on our lives? How long after seeing a performance does it stay in our minds? Is it possible for dance to make a valid comment on, for example, the socio-political context in which we live? Can it improve anything? Is it obliged to make a "politically correct" statement in order to better our lives?

Some would argue that the pleasure of looking at fit, beautiful bodies moving with suppleness and lyricism while creating clean lines and symmetry makes the world a better place; others are more engaged by the sensuality and eroticism of the dancing body. The medium of dance is an effective mode of communication because of its direct physicality. Even if the actual interpretation or contents are too literal, too obscure, or too decorative, the signals and symbolism transmitted by the physical body will often alert us to a subject or an issue. But how does that improve our understanding and awareness, to say nothing of bettering the world around us?

The range of dance that exists in New York City caters to many different tastes and desires. While much of the work is facile and irritatingly lightweight, or else the other extreme of being too earnest and self-indulgent, there are performances which have left me feeling distinctly optimistic. The choreographers and performers I’ve seen since moving to New York City have improved my world by producing work that is generous, engaging, and relevant to contemporary society. In each case, these artists have jogged my thoughts and provided me with insight into another dimension of the world in which I live. They have extended the boundaries of what we know as dance. Although they are all from different dance backgrounds, what they share in common is a strong connection to context—whether geographical, historical, or political.

Bill Shannon, from Pittsburgh, PA, is a performance and media artist who comes out of the New York City underground performance, hip-hop, and club scene, and whose work deals with themes of exclusion and disability. Shannon can be spotted surfing the urban waves of Manhattan on his skateboard and U-shaped crutches, tools for both his life and his art. A multi-disciplinary artist, Shannon has crafted his unique movement style around his need for crutches, as well as with his skateboard and breakdancing skills. His choreography, which is better suited to the street than the theater, is performed at high speed, often while weaving through traffic on his skateboard with incredible balance and fluidity, and aided by his crutches which become extensions of his body. The "experimental street happenings" that he stages in public places test the reactions of an audience unaware of his disability, while at the same time raising questions around representation, identity, and the function of public/private performance.

As part of his gigs, Shannon gives lecture-demonstrations, where he talks about different ways in which the public interacts with his street "happenings" via video and dialogue. In Regarding the Fall, Shannon shows examples of footage recorded by hidden video cameras catching spectators reacting to him as he performs simple actions in a public place. One clip shows him trying to pick up a glass bottle while balanced on his crutches, all the while being watched by an anxious elderly woman who has stopped to see whether his ungainly attempts at reaching the bottle will end in failure or achievement. Although she didn’t help, she was on standby mode as she waited in the wings; and when he managed to pick up the bottle, her body twitched in sympathetic reaction. Another example depicts an observer’s reaction as Shannon walked down stairs supported by a railing, and then fell. Someone rushes to help, but gets in the way instead.

What is interesting about these "happenings" is the role of the public and how they are participating performers, either by their reaction or their lack of one. Those who rush to help him are frequently old and frail themselves, and oftentimes become obstacles rather than aides, their good intentions becoming hindrances, as they offer support at all the wrong places with awkwardly-angled body parts. Those who stare are even more irritating, and for individuals such as Shannon who live with a disability, both the do-gooders and the gapers can become a burdensome part of daily existence.

A metropolitan wizard, Shannon turns clumsiness into dexterity as he flies across artistic boundaries, merging high art with club culture, academic with street. He makes sense of the city, broadens our minds, and tunes us into urban living, with its struggles, tensions, and demands. As he has transformed his disability into an art form (Shannon’s been afflicted with "Perthes disease," a rare bone disorder that has left him on crutches since the age of five), what remains of his "disability" can only be read as extraordinary ability. While his choreography is not always "uplifting" in its pursuit of subcultural themes that are dark and obscure, it challenges our notions of how we perceive movement and ability, offering an optimistic example of someone who has developed his art form despite significant challenges, and has remained part of a creative underground. His work has a function different from much dance in the way that it involves us intimately, and in doing so widens our imaginative parameters.

From within the deeply rural, lush gardens of Wave Hill, in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, Pearson/Widrig and Company perform their site work, A Curious Invasion, as part of a site-specific season commissioned by the organization Dancing in the Streets. Setting up a series of 13 installations spread out over the grounds of Wave Hill, the dancers take their audience on a magical mystery tour. Using haystacks, fans, sprinklers, hoses, ice cubes, video monitors, and boats, Sara Pearson and Patrik Widrig invite the public to navigate their own journeys around the performers.

While the dance installations do not boast sophisticated choreography, they are intentionally designed less to display dance steps than to enhance the natural environment of the grounds. Simplicity rules the day. Not only are we reminded of the history, architecture, and layout of the gardens and their lawns, greenhouses, flower gardens, sun terraces, and lakes, but we are taken into a world of fantasy. We have to use our imagination. To inspire this, random filmic images, such as a video of an ice-packing factory, and a video of urban hula dancers—unlikely individuals filmed doing Hawaiian hula dances around the city—are situated in secluded places. Other surreal happenings include a man dancing under a sprinkler framed by an accidental rainbow and some pine trees, three water nymphs pouring water libations in classical Greek poses, thirteen red clad women standing in boats spread out over the gardens, a naked man molding himself to a huge ice cube, and a couple cavorting in a steamy romp on a sloping lawn. A triumphant and rowdy finale features the whole company performing a crazy barn dance with haystacks and buckets of water, accompanied by loud swing music. Audience members, back from their rambles and discoveries, join in, erasing the divide between "performers" and "audience."

While the gardens of Wave Hill and their view of the Hudson on a radiant summer evening would make the world seem a better place to even the gloomiest person, having dance installations that emphasize the tranquility, secrecy, and magical characteristics of the gardens enhance a feeling of well-being. This is generous dance that casts its audience as active and participatory, and encourages them to invent their own stories; this is dance that flees the constraints of the theater, has no grand pretensions, and can be experienced by anyone.

Risa Steinberg is a dance veteran, a soloist, teacher, and director of the works of José Limón, with whom she danced and trained. Steinberg comes from an older generation of dance pioneers, and she performs with passion, heaps of expression, and a fixed intent. As a soloist, she is mesmerizing, dancing with a focus and concentration that one doesn’t always find in younger dancers. As an older woman she is impressively able and has incredible stamina.

A Celebration of Dance, which she performed earlier this year, consisted of a series of nine solos choreographed by an array of choreographers, from old moderns such as Isadora Duncan, José Limón, and Doris Humphrey, to the postmodern Ann Carlson and Mark Morris. This repertoire revealed Steinberg’s open-mindedness in embracing new work, as well as her impressive range of skills and understanding of how dance performance has developed in the last 50 years. In each dance, her well-honed body evokes the characters who have shaped American modern dance. In particular, she performed the tricky text-based work of conceptual artist Ann Carlson with an ease and confidence rarely seen in a dancer.

The fact that Steinberg is an older woman still so capable and full of energy gave me hope, along with an insight into the development of dance in this country. It was a performance that transported me back to the time before postmodern cool and bland movement-for-movement’s-sake became a dominant part of the dance canon, and it reiterated the possibility for dance’s ongoing connection with a wide range of meaningful personal and historical expressions.

Josephine Leask is a freelance dance writer and performer who recently moved to New York City from London. She has been working for the Village Voice and is correspondent to Dance Theatre Journal (London) and Tanz International (Berlin).