There are so many dance festivals across Europe during the summer—in every major city and many minor ones—that you could spend the whole three months bopping from one festival to another and still have enough for next year. What’s surprising and gratifying—and argues for taking this vacation fantasy seriously—is how little the offerings overlap. Each locale stakes out its own territory—geographically, thematically, stylistically, even demographically. Usually missing are the Americans and, more surprising given their proximity, the British. With Wayne McGregor at the helm, the Venice Biennale’s contemporary dance festival is the exception. Not only does the Londoner include a couple of Americans and a few Brits on the roster—Golden Lion for lifetime achievement is going to Twyla Tharp!— but the formalism and extreme movement at which Americans and McGregor excel make a strong showing. The Tao Dance Theatre continues its relentless, mesmerizing, primeval as well as virtuosic “Numerical Series” with 16 and 17. (Imagine Cunningham when the spectators were throwing tomatoes, and you get some idea of the Taiwanese troupe’s galvanizing effect.) With “Forsythe and Friends,” the honorary Frankfurter William Forsythe sets the “rubber legs” of b-boys beside his own slippery ballet style. McGregor doesn’t stop at the freaky extremes of anatomical possibility; he proceeds to sci-fi terrain, with immersive works by himself and the Italian choreographers Antonio de Rosa and Mattia Russo (collectively known as Kor’sia) that blur the line between the real and the virtual. —Apollinaire Scherr