Our guide to dance performances happening this weekend and in the week ahead.

RONALD K. BROWN/EVIDENCE at the Joyce Theater (Feb. 25-26, 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 27-28, 8 p.m.; through March 1). For decades, Brown has created profound choreography that grapples with life and faith, and his exuberant blend of contemporary and African dance can feel like physical prayer. He celebrates his companys 35th anniversary with a program that includes High Life (2000), which begins with a depiction of a slave auction; Grace (2000), a work made for the Alvin Ailey company in which a woman in white welcomes people to heaven; and Mercy, the companion piece to Grace, which premiered last year and is set to music by Meshell Ndegeocello. Wednesdays gala performance also includes an excerpt from Open Door with the Ailey dancers Linda Celeste Sims and Glenn Allen Sims. 212-242-0800, joyce.org

FLORENTINA HOLZINGER at N.Y.U. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts (Feb. 22-23, 7:30 p.m.). The 1928 ballet Apollo, about the Greek god and his muses, is a neoclassical gem that put George Balanchine on the map. In Apollon, this Austrian choreographer takes that work as a reference point and gives it a brash, feminist twist. Five women with a spectrum of body types, at times topless, critique the myth of the ideal feminine body as perpetuated by ballet. They do so through a series of sideshow acts and wacky scenarios an occult fitness studio, a cyborg bullfight drawing on, among other things, Holzingers fascination with Coney Islands colorful past.212-998-4941, nyuskirball.org

SARA JULI at Dixon Place (Feb. 21-22 and 27, 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 28, 7 p.m.). Within the setting of a pink, overly cheery bathroom, Juli dons curlers and a frilly robe for her new solo dance-theater piece, Burnt Out Wife, a comedic autobiographical reflection on a long list of marital issues (and grievances) like monogamy, loneliness and intimacy. With punch lines aplenty, the show, co-presented by the American Dance Festival, has the feeling of a stand-up routine. The accompanying frantic gestures enhance Julis take on the roller coaster of being in a relationship. 212-219-0736, dixonplace.org

[Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]

JAEWOO JUNG at the 92nd Street Y (Feb. 21, 8 p.m.; Feb. 22, 4 and 8 p.m.). The 92Ys Harkness Dance Festival kicks off with Perfect Skill, a work by this Korean choreographer in collaboration with Braveman, the dance collective he co-founded in 2017. The piece occurs largely in the dark, with bodies or parts of them illuminated by flashlights. At the center of Perfect Skill is a male duet, performed naked, which is more farcical than fanciful. Also on the program is the solo Uninhabited Island, an almost vaudevillian work featuring Jung and a small table that becomes both support and nemesis as he is flung around by unseen forces.212-415-5500, 92y.org

CHERYLYN LAVAGNINO at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music (Feb. 25-26, 7:30 p.m.). Edward Hoppers paintings captured a romantic loneliness, finding ominous beauty in scenes of collective isolation. In Tales of Hopper (2019), Lavagnino brings those scenes to life and puts their melancholy in motion to original music by Martin Bresnick. Performances of 2016s Veiled, a dance for six women that depicts, as the choreographer puts it, women who carry themselves with strength and dignity through an unjust world, and an excerpt from 2012s Triptych are also on the bill. dimennacenter.org/calendar

NEW YORK CITY BALLET at the David H. Koch Theater (Feb. 21, 8 p.m.; Feb. 22, 2 and 8 p.m.; Feb. 23, 3 p.m.; Feb. 25-27, 7:30 p.m.; through March 1). Performances of Peter Martinss Swan Lake continue through Sunday. Then the company introduces two programs that it believes best represent its identity: Classic NYCB I, on Tuesday, consists of Haieff Divertimento and Episodes by George Balanchine, Concertino by Jerome Robbins and the lovely Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes by Justin Peck. The Classic NYCB II bill on Wednesday and Feb. 27 features Robbinss In G Major, Christopher Wheeldons DGV: Danse Grande Vitesse and Pecks new work, set to music by Nico Muhly. 212-496-0600, nycballet.com

WORKS AND PROCESS at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (Feb. 23, 3 and 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 24, 7:30 p.m.). When it premiered in 1877, the ballet La Bayadre was on trend in exoticizing India, where the story of the captured temple dancer Nikiya takes place. Today, its setting and characters are considered problematic. For his new production of the tale, the former American Ballet Theater star and current Pennsylvania Ballet artistic director Angel Corella addresses those issues and offers excerpts (on Sunday). On Monday, the dancer and choreographer Caleb Teicher presents a preview of his new work devoted to swing dance, complete with Lindy Hoppers and big-band backup. 212-423-3575, worksandprocess.org

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7 Dance Performances to See in N.Y.C. This Weekend - The New York Times