Postmodern American choreographers may do “projects,” with pickup troupes they pray will also pick up their peculiar language of nerves, bones, and muscle-twitch speed, but they don’t head companies dedicated to their work—not in the United States anyway, not anymore. So chalk it up to the work’s shimmer and spunk, and how every few years it has gained in complexity and beauty, that news of Stephen Petronio Company’s imminent end—this summer at Jacob’s Pillow—was a punch to the gut. The finale is called It Ends Like This. So, how does it end? Magnificently, with the full flower of the Petronio troupe’s 40 years dancing Petronio on show. The intimidatingly bald, New Jersey–bred, onetime bad boy has long clad his dancers and the stage in renegade high fashion, bound sexuality to sexiness (of the queer variety), and yoked unleashed movement to extreme technical virtuosity. And when the celebration of all things queer grew commonplace, Petronio dug deeper into form. His phrases have gotten longer, his syntax more elegant, and the work more breathtaking and quietly heartbreaking. Which is all to say: what a ridiculous moment for him to slow down. Better that European contemporary ballet troupes should do as they have with William Forsythe: snatch him up. —Apollinaire Scherr