Once upon a time, dance in early January in New York City was a private affair. The big companies rehearsed for spring, and the pick-up troupes that dominate the New York scene shopped their latest wares before directors from across the country and world who needed to fill their theaters’ calendars. We amateurs watched old tapes. But in the early oughts, New York directors recognized a missed opportunity for their performance spaces, their artists, and their audiences, and converted the abject season into a celebration of the past season’s best—and the upcoming season’s most-anticipated—work. Festivals such as Under the Radar, Live Artery and, more recently, Out-FRONT! sprung up. At New York Live Arts’ Live Artery this year, two solos take on the same issue—what to make of a Black body in its life and death—from opposite ends of the hope–despair spectrum. For the aptly titled My Body, My Archive, the Congolese dancer-choreographer Faustin Linyekula uses his body’s memory to return family history to himself. As witnesses, we seal the deal. The sharp African-American dancer-choreographer Leslie Cuyjet, by contrast, turns audiences into investors—in her life insurance plan, no less, for a social experiment-cum-spectacle that is as mortifying for participants as it is wickedly smart. —Apollinaire Scherr