Luke Jennings: best dance of 2016

Times were tough but inventive, with fine work from old hands and female dance-makers forcing change• Observer critics’ reviews of the year in full
This has been a year in which experience has told. The best work has come not from youthful next big things, but from seasoned creators. Akram Khan gave us Until the Lions and his reimagining of Giselle (for English National Ballet), both darkly resonant pieces. Cathy Marston’s Jane Eyre for Northern Ballet, Richard Alston’s An