If you’re looking for lithe bodies moving in space, you will find them. If you’re looking for expressions of joy, grief, love, rock ‘n roll, and childlike imagination, you will find them, too. And if you’re looking for new choreographic voices emerging in young, practiced, and well-established dance makers, you will find them all at Dancenow/NYC, the homegrown fall dance festival of local companies and performers.

“Breakfast With You” might not have been the closer, but it stole the show, and rightfully so. Choreographed by Chris Elam and performed with Jocelyn Tobias to music by Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen, this duet displays the awkward coupling of two loving klutzes. What makes it work is the absolute realness that both performers bring to their roles; they’re not pretending to be nerds, they really are. In the array of off-kilter interactions, mothering and not-so-mothering lifts, private motifs, and unison dancing that goes in and out of synch along with the voices of Collins and Cohen, precious fleeting moments of elegant beauty emerge; two ugly ducklings can make golden eggs.

Dancenow/NYC continues at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater September 14 – 16 at 9:30 p.m. with the DancemOpolitan series, featuring 30 dancemakers in three different cabaret performance events, hosted by choreographer Leigh Garrett.