Selecting “bests” is problematic: As definitively as one may prefer a particular interpreter, event, or dance troupe to another, an absolute best rarely exists. And while the critic shouldn’t mute his or her individual sensibility any more than should the performer, subjectivity has become wildly overrated and overindulged in today’s discourse about dance.

But choosing up “bests” does function as a useful organizing tool: Each “best” must dominate a designated category that catalogs the year’s events as well as the lay of the dance landscape.

So okay, here goes:

BEST GALA PERFORMANCE: Galas can bring out the worst in performers and audiences, as one bout of barbaric pyrotechnics follows another. At the annual “Stars of the 21st Century” gala held at the New York State Theater last February, however, the Bolshoi Ballet’s Sergei Filin and Svetlana Lunkina came from Moscow to perform with a conviction, subtlety, and beauty that transformed the gala venue into a platform for high art. I’d never seen them dance together, and I don’t believe they dance together often at the Bolshoi. They should.

BEST RETURN OF A GREAT DANCER: Monique Meunier has had a troubled career. She left New York City Ballet as a principal dancer in 2002 to join American Ballet Theater as a soloist, and gave some definitive performances there. In 2005, though, she and ABT parted company as well. Last March, Ms. Meunier returned to dance with the Nilas Martins Dance Company at the Di-Capo Opera Theatre. Her performance showed that behind every great ballerina there must be a great dancer, whose body moves as an organic, perfectly synchronized whole; who has a torso as well as limbs, who thinks in terms of sculpture and momentum, as well as line.

BEST REVIVAL: In 1983, American Ballet Theatre reconstructed from notation Balanchine’s 1945 masterpiece “Symphonie Concertante,”and, after not performing it since 1999, revived it again for its City Center season in October. ABT captured the spirit and the glow of the piece, and the way it shares elements with yet remains unlike any other ballet in the Balanchine canon. And the company really did it, giving six performances as well as a gala preview, with three casts of paired principals. Leads, demi-soloists, and corps de ballet: Each proudly assumed its carefully arranged place in the Balanchine schema.

BEST UNEXPECTEDLY REVELATORY PERFORMANCE OF A CLASSIC WORK: Although “Concerto Barocco,” is one of Balanchine’s greatest and most renowned works, I’ve seen many drab performances of it given by NYCB. But in the last year, the company found its feet in the piece anew, demonstrating a refreshed understanding of the way the 1941 ballet’s voice is equal parts stompin’ at the Savoy and rarified lyric expression, and stinting neither camp. Last January 21, Wendy Whelan, Rachel Rutherford, and Albert Evans led the company in a “Concerto Barocco,” that took off and soared. That night, the audience knew it had seen something special.

BEST PERFORMANCE I DIDN’T REVIEW: Because of a scheduling bottleneck, I didn’t write about Company C’s arrival from Walnut Creek, California, for a season at the Joyce SoHo last July. New works by ex-Paul Taylor star Patrick Corbin and Company C’s artistic director Charles Anderson weren’t anything to sneeze at, but the high point of the program was a revival of Twyla Tharp’s 1976 “Country Dances, Cacklin’ Hen.” In it, Tharp cross-weaves bluegrass with ballet and just about everything else you can think of. The radically personal synthesis she offers seems unlike anything else.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ANIMAL: Now that’s easy. Last summer at the Lincoln Center Festival, a crow served as an essential component of Saburo Teshigawara’s performance piece “Bones in Pages.” (“KARAS,” the name of Mr. Teshigawara’s company, is the Japanese word for “crow.”) The bird and Mr. Teshigawara were inseparable. From time to time the stage went to black, and the audience could still hear the crow’s claws tapping around the stage; at the conclusion of the piece, Mr. Teshigawara brought out the bird for a bow.

BEST NIGHTS AT THE OPERA, DANCEWISE: The Metropolitan Opera’s much, and sometimes deservedly maligned ballet company has improved. Last March, Tchaikovsky’s “Mazeppa” received its company premiere. Tchaikovsky’s brutal tale contains one of the most invigorating and infectious pieces of dance music ever composed for an opera, and choreographer Sergei Gritsai was able to make good use of all its possibilities for Ukrainian folk display and mock combat to presage the bloodshed to follow.

And in September, the Metropolitan Opera revived Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda” after many years. Christopher Wheeldon contributed new choreography to the zippy, tunefully indelible “Dance of the Hours,” and recruited two first-rank guest stars: Italian ballerina Letizia Giuliani, unknown to me previously, and ABT’s Angel Corella. Mr. Wheeldon’s piece didn’t really relate to the Venetian Carnival festivities that frame the opera, but it was an essay in British ballet style, and that, too, proved a legitimate way to approach the work. It was full of festivity and made good use of the limited stage space available in the ballroom scene. It wowed the audience but minded its manners, too.