Dance
‘Times Four’
Wally Cardona’s reconstruction of this David Gordon duet from 1975 was both an act of devotion to, and evocation of, the ghosts of New York past — not just of Gordon and his wife and duet partner, Valda Setterfield, its original dancers; but to the whole ethos of downtown dance in its 1970s heyday, with its intimate scale, sense of complicity between performers and audience, and clarifying combination of rigor and everyday movement. “Times Four” was performed with flawless commitment and bright flashes of wit by Cardona and Molly Lieber: You could hear the dancers’ breathe and their bodies connect with the floor and, just beyond, the noises of the city that was the cradle of this art.
—Rachel Saltz
headbanging
Ozzy Osbourne Onstage
In July, I went to “Back to the Beginning,” Ozzy Osbourne’s and Black Sabbath’s final concert in Birmingham, England, but what I really got was the most ludicrous musical event I’d ever attended, with a who’s who of heavy metal acts (Metallica, Slayer, Gojira) paying tribute to their icon. “It’s like Ozzy biting the head off a bat,” one fan said of the lineup: “People will think it’s made up.”
—Alex Marshall
Off Broadway
‘Bat Boy: The Musical’ at New York City Center
Apologies to Guillermo del Toro, but there was only one misbegotten doomed creature for me in 2025. This revival of the 2001 cult musical, ripped straight from the headlines of The Weekly World News, had bite, blood and heart.
—James Poniewozik
on Broadway
‘Maybe Happy Ending,’ the Second Time Around
I recently saw this Tony-winning musical again after one year, and although it’s generally about two robots falling in love, the duet between Darren Criss’s Oliver and his owner, James (Marcus Choi), moved me to tears both times. It’s such a pure and radiant expression of love — defying the notion that everything must end eventually.
—Robin Kawakami
on and Off Broadway
‘Liberation’
I dreaded seeing this play, which sounded like it was going to be a finger-wagging history lesson, but I went because Bess Wohl’s work is always worth seeing. It’s told from the point of view of a daughter reconstructing her mom’s involvement in the early 1970s women’s movement, and it hit me hard, because my own mother’s life was transformed by that era. My mother died between the time I saw “Liberation” Off Broadway in February and on Broadway in October, so she never got to see the play and we never got to talk about it, but a scene in which the protagonist imagines asking her deceased mother about choices, and change, and child-raising, and paths not taken, will stay with me for a long time.
—Michael Paulson
heroes out of costume
‘Superman’
When Clark Kent finds himself suddenly humbled, grappling with his biological parentage and his identity, his father consoles him, saying: “Your choices, Clark, your actions — that’s what makes you who you are. I’ll tell you something, son, I couldn’t be more proud of you.” For an adopted kid, that felt familiar, too.
—Matt Stevens
reunions
‘The Boy Is Mine’ Tour
Brandy, who broke out as the California girl next door with the iconic braids, and Monica, the rebellious Southern girl with the pixie cut, won a Grammy in 1999 for their vocal duel “The Boy Is Mine,” but the studio-manufactured tension stoked a yearslong pop rivalry. So it was with a healing exhale that I watched them last month at the Barclays Center, double headliners on a tour named for the song that once divided them — and their fans.
—Rebecca Thomas
film
Renate Reinsve in ‘Sentimental Value’
The millennial Hepburn, or maybe the millennial Karina. In “The Worst Person in the World” and again this year, in Joachim Trier’s crisp-as-the-Oslofjord drama of father and daughter separated and reconciled through art, the Norwegian actress smiles, stumbles, sighs, second-guesses — and fashions the most natural portraits of 21st-century youth ever put to screen. Almost no one under 40 has really captured the intense aimlessness of my generation, with our endless choices and shrunken futures; Reinsve’s done it twice.
—Jason Farago
Music
‘Don’t Tap the Glass’
Last summer was an embarrassment of riches when it came to buoyant pop music; this year, not so much. If it weren’t for this clever, breezy and oh-so-danceable Tyler, the Creator album, my 2025 playlists would have been starved of all fun.
—Kyle Buchanan
still thinking about the roman empire
‘Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience)’
I love dance music with a sleazy edge, stuff like “Walk the Night” by the Skatt Bros. that Optimo would play (R.I.P. Keith McIvor, a.k.a. JD Twitch, a legend). The album Decius released this year, “Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience),” is right up that dark alley, with a conceit that they’re something like Caligula’s house band in a crumbling Roman Empire. Partius maximus.
—David Renard
choosing violence
‘No Other Choice’
Scenes from the satirical film “No Other Choice” by Park Chan-wook (“Decision to Leave,” “Oldboy”) have wormed their way inside my head and won’t leave. I keep seeing flashes of a laid-off paper mill manager, a North Korean gun and twisty roads ahead.
—Kathleen Massara
music
‘Let God Sort Em Out’
This long-anticipated fourth studio album from Clipse did not disappoint and was what I had on repeat following its summer drop. The album, backed by a reunion with Clipse’s longtime producer Pharrell Williams, showcased Pusha T and Malice at their finest through emotional depth and lyrical precision. No skips. No notes.
—Jonathan Abrams
Opera
‘Fidelio’ at the Met
True dramatic sopranos who can scale the heights of Wagner or Strauss don’t come along very often, which is why I feel lucky to be alive to catch the astonishing ascent of Lise Davidsen. Her star turn in Beethoven’s only opera, “Fidelio,” at the Metropolitan Opera last March, leading a hard-to-top cast, made for one of those utterly satisfying nights when I thought to myself that there was no place I would have rather been: no other opera house, with no other singers.
—Michael Cooper
visual art
Anselm Kiefer in Amsterdam
In late May I went to Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, where I saw Anselm Kiefer’s 2024 large-scale installation “Sag mir wo die Blumen sind” (“Where have all the flowers gone?”), a staggering, floor-to-ceiling, 360-degree work at the top of a grand staircase, made of gold and clay and paint and rose petals, mourning the role of war and violence in the trajectory of human history. I’m really glad I made the trip.
—Alissa Wilkinson
songs
‘Go Go Juice’ by Sabrina Carpenter
In “Go Go Juice,” from her new album, Sabrina Carpenter proclaims “Sippin’ on my go go juice/I can’t be blamed/Some good old-fashioned fun sure numbs the pain,” and it has lived on repeat in my head and on my playlist ever since. Sometimes you need a song to remind you that not everything has to be so serious all the time.
—Shivani Gonzalez
toiling and troubling
Witchery in Pop Culture
Ever since Lady Gaga cast a spell during the Grammys broadcast, when she debuted “Abracadabra” off her album “Mayhem,” witchery has been bubbling up across the pop world, and I’m not even talking about “Wicked.” “Everybody Scream,” Florence + the Machine’s album released on Halloween, is replete with overt imagery and lyrics, and Zach Cregger’s surprise horror hit “Weapons” is about a witch leveraging the dark arts for her own survival. Across the board, perhaps reflecting our current fraught era of American feminism, this particular assembly is defined by ferocity, fury, frustration and catharsis — and entrancing plenty along the way.
—Maya Salam
Off Broadway
‘Can I Be Frank?’
This solo show written and performed by Morgan Bassichis (and directed by “Oh, Mary!”’s Sam Pinkleton) is built from the archival writings, songs and comedic material of the 1980s queer performance artist Frank Maya. Bassichis moves effortlessly between their own sharp reflections (and occasional rants) and Maya’s original words, creating a conversation across time that is deeply funny and moving.
—Tala Safie
TV
‘Angels/Covid in America’ on ‘English Teacher’
On the Season 2 premiere of the subversive sitcom “English Teacher,” Brian Jordan Alvarez, playing a gay English teacher in his 30s, tries to convince his students to do “Angels in America” as their school play. The class rebels — “We don’t relate to any of that!” one says; another refers disparagingly to the 1980s as the “AIDS-ees” — and insists, over the objections of their befuddled teacher, on repurposing Tony Kushner’s work for their generation: “Covid in America.” (FX canceled the show this year.)
—Adam Nagourney
Documentaries
‘Come See Me in the Good Light’
This documentary stayed with me for weeks after watching it, not only for the poet Andrea Gibson’s gut-wrenching battle with terminal cancer, but for their sublime words and wisdom, and the ferocious love shared with their partner, the writer Megan Falley.
—Barbara Chai
live performance
Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Stop in New Jersey
I cannot get this show off my brain! I was so impressed by Beyoncé’s showmanship and the way she cleverly wove country and R&B onstage. Not to mention, she danced for nearly three hours in frigid rain.
—Derrick Bryson Taylor
music & memory
‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’
Mark Lanegan, the former lead singer of the Screaming Trees, who had a gruff voice that made beauty out of grinding dirges, could also show his tender side, especially in duets with female singers. This fall, Chrissie Hynde released a cover of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” recorded with Lanegan before his death, and listening to it reminded me of seeing Lanegan play Webster Hall ages ago and thinking, that man is not going to live very long; I hate that I was right.
—Ethan Hauser
Art
Ruth Asawa at MoMA
If you grow up in the Bay Area, Ruth Asawa’s work isn’t hard to find; she’s sort of a delightful den mother of public art. But I still wasn’t prepared for the multidisciplinary breadth and sheer creative joy of her solo exhibition at MoMA, from the swooping Suessical shapes of her wire sculptures to the life masks of friends and family that once framed the front door of her Noe Valley home.
—Leah Greenblatt
Villains
Aunt Gladys in ‘Weapons’
The broken twigs. That broken wig! In “Weapons,” the supreme villain of 2025 (played by Amy Madigan) mixed camp with cunning to create the ultimate in smudged-lipstick fright. Hide your kids, hide your wife and definitely hide your husband when this pasty-faced menace comes knocking at your door.
—Mekado Murphy
chaud frosty
That Sex Scene in ‘The Naked Gun’
They say comedy does not travel, but I saw the “Naked Gun” reboot in Brooklyn and a small town in France, and the sex scene between Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson and a vengeful behatted snowman destroyed equally in both theaters. There’s something universally funny about Frosty breaking bad.
—Jason Zinoman
podcasts
The Telepathy Tapes
Imagine an international, perhaps interplanetary and even inter-dimensional network where individual intelligences and spirits commune, learning firsthand from the likes of Einstein and Aristotle, reading deeply of history and literature, working out mathematical and scientific problems, creating art or music, transiting realities, carrying messages from ancestors, in short, defying the hopeless prognosis of autism-related apraxia even as they redefine the limits of consciousness for the rest of us. These are the nonspeakers, the young people who, in Season 1 of “The Telepathy Tapes,” learn techniques to break through the motor dysfunction that silences them and use letter boards and other tools to connect with their families and explain their rich inner lives, spelling their words laboriously by poking a pencil through the stenciled board, which, they indicate, is so much slower and more frustrating than sharing via telepathy.
—Helen T. Verongos
photography
‘You Are What You Do’
Daniel Arnold’s latest monograph, “You Are What You Do,” was published by Loose Joints earlier this fall. In it are the types of pictures that will bust your eyes and heart wide open if you let them. And you should!
—Amanda Webster
revivals
‘Ragtime’ at Lincoln Center Theater
Having missed the much-lauded City Center run, I was determined not to miss the production’s transfer to Lincoln Center. While the entire cast is incredibly talented, no one captivated me quite like Joshua Henry, who gives an emotionally raw, magnetic performance that I could not look away from.
—Jennifer Ledbury
video games
Split Fiction
There are so many wow moments in the cooperative video game Split Fiction, where fantasy and science fiction writers must work together to survive the worlds of their imaginations. When my 9-year-old daughter and I were not determined to survive a dystopian game show and a dying sun’s solar flares, we were charmed by a flatulent pig and a potion that turns you into a ball of yarn.
—Jason M. Bailey
Documentaries
‘The American Revolution’
As a hardened Brooklyn history nerd, I’ve long known that the biggest battle of the American Revolution was fought in my neighborhood. (Spoiler alert: We lost.) But it took the heart-pounding sequence about the Battle of Long Island in Ken Burns’s 12-hour epic — complete with animated maps and eerily abstract re-enactor footage — to make the action, and the terror, of Aug. 27, 1776, seem real. Who knew it started with a skirmish over stolen watermelon? And ended with a mountain of hacked bodies on the site of my Sunday farmers’ market? War is hell, even in the 18th century.
—Jennifer Schuessler
TV
‘Étoile’
The bond between SuSu, an aspiring young dancer, and Cheyenne, a star ballerina who normally can’t stand children — but describes SuSu as “this little girl who appears only at night like a fairy”— was the most complex and charming story line in the prematurely (and wrongly!) canceled streaming series “Étoile.” With its blend of funny and heartfelt, their relationship showed how dancers are in the real world: watching, absorbing, learning and growing from one generation to the next.
—Gia Kourlas
screen to onscreen stage
‘Hamlet’ in ‘Hamnet’
The best stage moment of the year was in a film: “Hamnet,” which movingly and uniquely portrays the power of theater by shifting the usual focus from the actors to the audience. This occurs in the movie’s final segment, after the Shakespeares’ young son has died, when Agnes travels to London to attend a performance of “Hamlet” in which Will plays the ghost. First through her eyes, and then through those of the groundlings and gods, we see the communal harrowing and healing effect of great tragedy.
—Jesse Green
dark comedies
‘Bad Shabbos’
This comedy about an interfaith couple introducing the parents to each other at a Shabbat dinner cheered me up during rough patches. I keep going back for the sharp wit, the great cast, the elements of Talmud and Judaism — the Dvar Torah is brilliant — and the twist at the end is still surprising.
—Deborah Leiderman
Theater
‘Dear Bill’ in ‘Operation Mincemeat’
I spent the first half-hour of the musical “Operation Mincemeat” wondering how I could discreetly walk out, but then came “Dear Bill,” perhaps the best new song on Broadway this year. Within the span of six lilting minutes, I was moved to tears, convinced Jak Malone should win a Tony Award (he did) and firmly seated; never before had my feelings about a show so quickly, drastically changed.
—Joshua Barone
ballet horror
‘Tanz’ at NYU Skirball
I’ll never forget the moment in “Tanz,” a beautiful, challenging work by the choreographer Florentina Holzinger, when a naked woman danced in midair, suspended by hooks in her back. I watched all four Ari Aster movies this year, but nothing unsettled me quite like this fearless performance.
—Andrew LaVallee
live performance
Olivia Dean at Brooklyn Paramount
In a two-hour set on a muggy July evening, Olivia Dean played through her debut album “Messy” and teased singles off her then-upcoming release “The Art of Loving” with little more than her band, a red curtain and a wind machine. I’ve been a fan for a few years now, but what a delight it has been to watch her rise to fame this year — opening for Sabrina Carpenter, being the musical guest on “S.N.L.” and now a Grammy nominee — even if I have to fight a few more fans for seats at Madison Square Garden next year.
—Michaela Towfighi
photography
‘Casa Susanna’ at the Met
In 2004, a Manhattan flea market yielded a sensational cache of snapshots taken at an early 1960s Catskill resort named Casa Susanna that catered to men who cross-dressed as women, and who formed a tight trans community in a queerphobic time. The photos of the resort and its self-assertive, self-amused clientele, make up an unforgettable show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Jan. 25) and a highlight of my art year.
—Holland Cotter
opera
‘Wozzeck’ by the Canadian Opera Company
War, I guess, was on my mind. Outstanding for me was William Kentridge’s production of Alban Berg’s opera “Wozzeck,” the brutal tale of a soldier driven to madness set in the years around World War I. I saw it in Toronto, presented by the Canadian Opera Company.
—Graham Bowley
Podcasts
‘At the End of a Broadway Run’ from ‘What We Spend’
I was enamored of this new series, in which truck drivers, marketing directors, bartenders and other ordinary people catalog every cent they spend in a week and why. In this episode, a working actress in New York (she is also a babysitter, video editor and waitress) who earns between $60,000 and $70,000 a year (on one day, she restricts her expenses to just $8.90) defends expensive Broadway tickets as tantamount to food. “I have to see theater, or I can’t justify doing theater, or feeling inspired, or living in New York,” she says. “If I don’t invest in art, I don’t see why I’m even here.”
—Reggie Ugwu
visual art
‘Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck’ at the Met
This month, along with the long, dark nights, a visitor from Finland arrived at the Met, as quietly magical, and memorable, as the Northern Lights: She is Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946), still unknown here though beloved at home. Her first-ever solo painting exhibition at the museum reveals striking, emotionally charged portraits, landscapes and interiors, first naturalistic and later nearly abstract. While there are traces of the Old Masters, Degas and Cezanne, Schjerfbeck’s visual language is so modern, fresh and spare, it brought back the wonder of seeing another Nordic pioneer — the midcentury designer Alvar Aalto — for the first time.
—Barbara Graustark
reality TV
‘The Real Housewives of Orange County’ in Amsterdam
“Girls trips” are frequently deployed on Bravo’s “Real Housewives” franchise to stir up drama in an unfamiliar location, but at their best (see the New York wives’ journey to Tequila, Mexico, in 2017) they provide pure comedy. Shannon Beador, Heather Dubrow and Gina Kirschenheiter’s chemically enhanced excursions in the Netherlands this past season were fall-down funny — and not just because Shannon repeatedly fell down.
—Caryn Ganz
podcasts
‘Berlant & Novak’
Listening to “Berlant & Novak” is like being tucked inside a candlelit fort with a glass of wine, flanked by your two funniest, possibly sorcerous friends — those friends whose shampoo always smells incredible when you hug them — while they braid your hair and indulge in the erotic thrill of following a tangential thought you were already halfway thinking somewhere deliciously unhinged. Poog hags, unite.
—Jolie Ruben
The post 41 Things That Stuck With Us in 2025 appeared first on New York Times.
