The San Francisco Ballet celebrates its 75th anniversary season in 2008, and the final programs are anything but a look backwards. The season comes to a close with the forward-looking New Works Festival, which features Mark Morris's Joyride, set to John Adams's Son of a Chamber Symphony, that "lived up to the buzz," says the San Francisco Chronicle, plus works set to Nonesuch recordings by Kronos Quartet and Gidon Kremer.

In a set of performances at Boston's Schubert Theatre last week, the Paul Taylor Dance Company delivered a "sharp, vibrant program," according to the Boston Globe, of two Taylor classics and two pieces receiving their Boston premieres, including Lines of Loss, set to Kronos Quartet's recording of Early Music (Lachryma Antiqua). Writes Thea Singer in her Globe review of the event, Lines of Loss could be seen as the 77-year-old choreographer's reflection on the passage of time, and so the music, fittingly, "weaves through the movement like a scratchy memory." With such a stirring piece, for Singer, the dance's "ending comes almost too soon."

The Zenon Dance Company, based in Minnesota's Twin Cities, is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a series of performances beginning tonight and running through Sunday. The Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages previews the shows and lists among the program's highlights classic pieces like Bebe Miller's Sanctuary, set to music by Marianne Faithfull, and two new works, including the Midwestern premiere of Doug Varone's Of the Earth Far Below set to Steve Reich's Triple Quartet.

Ballet Theatre Afrikan begins its latest Hooked on Classics series tonight with choreographer Christopher Kindo's Sollopa, featuring the music of Giya Kancheli's Night Prayers by Kronos Quartet, at the University of Johannesburg Arts Centre. According to joburg.org.za, the official site of the city of Johannesburg, Sollopa uses the "mesmerising music" of Night Prayers to tell a tale of magic and passion in a mythical kingdom, through both classical and contemporary dance movement. Ballet Theatre Afrikan premiered the piece in 2004. 

Tonight kicks off the University of Wisconsin–Madison Dance Program's Fall Faculty Dance Concert, which runs through Saturday, November 17. The event will feature works by faculty choreographers, including the premiere of Professor Li Chiao-Ping's Turnaround, set to the third movement of Steve Reich's Different Trains, "After the War." The new dance piece was created for students and, according to the Madison Daily Page, "takes snapshot looks at a community left to rebuild itself." It will also represent the University at a regional dance festival to be held in Madison in March 2008.

American Ballet Theatre will give the world premiere of C. to C. (Close to Chuck), created by Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo, at New York City Center on October 27. The piece was inspired by Philip Glass's A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close, which the composer wrote for pianist Bruce Levingston in 2005. Glass is "the most inventive and innovative composer of my adult life," Close tells the New York Sun. The addition of Elo's choreography reminds him of those earlier collaborative days in the 1960s: "To get a good choreographer and composer and visual artist together," he tells the Sun, "it's like old home week!"

The closing night of New York City Center's 2007 Fall for Dance festival, on October 6, featured the Elisa Monte Dance company's signature work, Treading (1979), set to Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. This was the fourth annual festival, which kicks off City Center's season with low-priced tickets to see some of the world's greatest dance companies.