Best dance company
Ballet is to dance as epic poetry is to literature: formal, structured, physical, passionate, a foundation from which our storytelling - in words and in movement - evolved. One of the primary goals of Boston Ballet, the city's cornerstone of dance and a readers' pick year after year, is staging classics such as Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake alongside the most innovative contemporary choreography, balancing risk-taking with accessibility. Boston Ballet's Nutcracker, which moves into its temporary digs at the Colonial Theatre this year, is a holiday tradition, drawing thousands every year for the Sugar Plum Fairy, the Mouse King, Clara, Fritz, and Drosselmeyer. It's the most widely attended ballet in the world; no wonder it wins in our readers' poll every year.

If Boston Ballet represents the classic and formal, Snappy Dance Theater, a new winner in the Phoenix readers' poll, sets the standard for cutting edge. Founded in 1996, Snappy Dance is "dedicated to creating performances which work the edge of oxymoron." Of course! You can picture exactly what the physical manifestation of the edge of oxymoron is. If you're imagining sculpturally absurd physicality, and movement combining acrobatics, martial arts, puppetry, theater, and dance, then you're probably on the right track. The troupe's most recent project, The Temperamental Wobble, commissioned by FleetBoston Celebrity Series, was inspired by the haunting, humorous work of artist/illustrator Edward Gorey, master of the macabre. And like Boston Ballet, Snappy's dance is of poetry as well, albeit with a more absurdist rhyme and meter.

Boston Ballet, 19 Clarendon Street, Boston, (617) 695-6950, www.bostonballet.org; Snappy Dance Theater, (617) 718-2497, www.snappydance.com.