For seven weeks each summer, Duke University, in Durham, is overtaken by the American Dance Festival, a dancer training ground by day and an entertainment palace by night. The evening performances alternate between well-established choreographers, often unveiling ADF-commissioned premieres, and those on their way up. This year, the category of tried and true includes Pilobolus, Paul Taylor, Ronald K. Brown, Doug Varone, Urban Bush Women, and Ballet Hispánico. For the future of this peculiar art—modern dance’s promise—I’d head to Kayla Farrish’s Put Away the Fire, Dear (June 25–27) and Hung-Chung Lai’s Birdy (June 14–15). The African-American Farrish sets “six BIPOC and marginalized characters jumping through portals” between American life and its midcentury movie rendition for a cinematic species of kitchen-sink dance theater. “Born from an unapologetic desire for flight,” the Taiwanese Lai’s ensemble piece is not cute and fluttery, as the title Birdy might imply, but mythic and martial, hypnotic and fierce. —Apollinaire Scherr