For globetrotting cosmopolitan dance lovers, this is the month to vacate New York and head to Berlin, where the annual, illustriously cutting-edge festival Tanz im August presides. From late afternoon until hours after dark, 18 distinct works take the stage—or, rather, nine stages, spread across Berlin. All the pieces, from August 15 until month’s end, are of recent vintage, with four world premieres. The choreographers are a nice mix of big names on the conceptually-minded dance and performance art circuit (such as Jerome Bel, Dorothée Munyaneza, and Meg Stuart) and the more locally recognized. As for the dances, preoccupations with altered states and restaging colonial history for the colonized predominate. In the first category, Brazilian Michelle Moura’s Boca Cova (Grave Mouth) and Italian Alessandro Sciarroni’s five-hour Dream (don’t worry, you may wake up—and leave—whenever you want) stand out. For a dose of truth to power, I’d try Soa Ratsifandrihana’s fractured, fantastical yet lowkey Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna (Comparison, transmission, rivalry). —Apollinaire Scherr