The Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation's executive director, Sharon Gersten Luckman, has announced she's leaving the company at the end of next year to pursue other endeavors, including working with other arts non-profit groups.

On New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2011 passed into 2012. And with it passed one of the country’s most important cultural institutions. Learn more about the man behind the dance company here.

Shen Wei, who choreographed the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics, brings his dance company to perform at the Park Avenue Armory this week. Then Elizabeth Streb's company, STREB Extreme Action, will take over the armory, followed by the final performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

On Tuesday, composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim will receive the Handel Medallion, the city's highest award for achievement in the arts.

Small to mid-sized Brooklyn performing arts dance companies can now apply for 14 free months of professional development through the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the DeVos Institute of Arts Management.

At long last, a decades-old arts education group has a permanent home uptown. On Tuesday night, the National Dance Institute will inaugurate its first-ever headquarters in central Harlem, complete with studios and a 175-seat performance space.

Like most New Yorkers, Mikhail Baryshnikov had a bit of a storage problem. So when the dancer and his wife were getting ready to move, Baryshnikov donated 35 boxes filled with videos, photos, letters and documents -- his archive -- to the New York Public Library.

New York City Ballet had a sellout crowd at its fall season opener on Thursday thanks to the music of former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney and costumes created by his daughter, the superstar designer Stella McCartney.

This month, cultural institutions around the city are paying respect to the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks through literature, visual arts, theater, dance, music, and film. Here's our guide to what's happening around town.

Kids will get a hands-on look at mosaics, literature, calligraphy and other pieces of the "Muslim World" thanks to a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities that went to the Children's Museum of Manhattan.

On Wednesday, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company announced that it had commissioned artist Daniel Arsham, who was born in 1980, to create the décor for a series of events at the Park Avenue Armory that are part of the company's final “Legacy Tour” performances. Following the performances, which will be staged from December 29 to 31, the company will permanently disband.

An international ensemble of dancers, drummers and martial artists are set to perform at the Asia Society's "Hip Hop Kung Fu" event on Wednesday night.

On Tuesday, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts doled out $15.8 million in Fiscal Year 2011-12 funding to arts groups. The three groups that got the most funding are all based in Newark.

The Chase Latino Cultural Festival runs from Wednesday through Sunday in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Now in its 15th year, the festival will have spoken word, music, dance, theater and film tailored to celebrate the city's most diverse borough.

After nearly 60 years of performing its contemporary choreographic collages worldwide, the company will return to New York for the final performances of its farewell Legacy Tour. On Monday, the Park Avenue Armory announced that it would host the company's last shows.

Over the course of its 2011-2012 season, the group will present an ambitious mix of programming ranging from brand new productions by young talent to classic choreographies that helped launch the career of the company's executive artistic director Bill T. Jones.

The Department of Cultural Affairs had faced $43 million cuts in the mayor’s original proposed budget, which would have reduced operating funds to major museums, theaters and zoos by 50 percent and caused some 1,000 employees in the cultural sector to be laid off.

Starting Wednesday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Cuban dance will be less about conga drums and hip isolations and more about soaring grand jetés and arabesques.

On Monday, City Council committees held hearings on the mayor’s proposed $43 million cuts to the Department of Cultural Affairs.

From Bulgarian folk dance to New York pole dancing, the New York Dance Parade will be shimmying, swinging and pirouetting downtown on Saturday.