New York City art-watching is an extreme sport for me. It's a jam, cram and scram affair. I fill every possible hour with dance, theater or an exhibit, fill in the blanks with some high quality art schmoozing and worry about making sense of it all later.

Eyes open and legs-in-continual-motion defines my Apple-crashing approach.

Speaking of the legs part, New Yorkers do this thing —walking — to get to places. Fundamentally I don't approve as it eliminates the possibility of snazzy footwear. I much prefer flagging down those heated yellow cabs. But when they didn't come during this trip, I was forced into dank underground caves to travel on noisy trains with strangers who have no idea how to strike up a conversation with a Texan.

Oh, how I missed my minivan, which in New York terms is a traveling one bedroom.

Alas, I had a purpose in leaving balmy Houston for the frigid New York landscape: I just had to see Jonah Bokaer's Replica at The New Museum. Dance audiences might recall Bokaer's stunning performance of The Invention of Minus One at DiverseWorks last season. For more than a year I have been working on an interview with the choreographer and media artist, so I thought it might be wise to actually see what he is talking about. Replica, a collaboration between Bokaer, visual artist Daniel Arsham and dancer/choreographer Judith Sanchez Ruiz, delves into memory, space and time with a spare but elegant precision. Bokaer's brand of enlisting technology speaks to an innate sense of scale, so that the viewer is given visual rests and time to process. He calibrates his work to how the eye sees, which makes for a profoundly satisfying experience.

The same cannot be said for Mortal Engine, a flashy high-tech piece by Australian dance company, Chunky Move at Brooklyn Academy of Music. It's trippy, like a big blockbuster movie laser show with dance. The Melbourne-based troupe, founded by Gideon Obarzanek, is known for being completely unpredictable. Mortal Engine was truly amazing to watch, and do watch a snippet here, yet it left me cold.

I relished in rarely-seen vintage Alvin Ailey works from the '70s and '80s in a program of "Ailey Highlights" performed by sleek dancers of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. How wonderful to see such classic jazz moves that have nearly disappeared from today's dance landscape. The company visits Houston every other year or so, but it's well worth the trip to see one of their New York performances.

I had hoped to fill in my serious art-going with some Broadway fluff, but it was not to happen. The title God of Carnage might be a tip-off to some, but not me. Yasmina Reza's examination of the dark undercurrent of polite folk left me emotionally exhausted. Still, Jimmy Smits, last seen as the prez on The West Wing, was terrific.

Next to Normal, a musical, sounds fun, right? When Facebook messages warned me to bring a suitcase full of tissues I started to worry. It's a musical about a woman with bipolar disorder. It starts out sad and gets sadder. It's a beautifully-crafted show for those who go to the theater to get depressed. Really, I was glad to see this fine show, gladder for the fridge full of beer in my brother's apartment to drown my after-show sorrows.

Ragtime is a gorgeous top-to-bottom show, even it it's not exactly holiday fare either.

Burn The Floor, a ballroom-on-steroids extravaganza, hit all the right notes, with no story or dialogue whatsoever — just nonstop smokin' hot dancing performed by men without shirts and women in disappearing dresses. I left completely healed from my earlier Broadway downers.

But the most buff fluff came in the form of Doug Elkins' Fraulein Maria, a combo parody and love letter to The Sound of Music at Dance Theater Workshop. It's funny, poignant, and I laughed until I cried. Elkins' hip hop-inspired solo to Climb Every Mountain is delicious. Even the photos are hysterical. The New York Times piece on the story behind Elkins' dance is well worth reading. Houston dance goers may remember that Elkins came here years ago to work with the now-defunct Fly Dance Company, where they did the best work of their careers. We also have our own Elkins veteran in Jane Weiner of Hope Stone Dance, who danced with his company for a decade. Shades of Elkins humor pepper her choreography.

In anticipation of the Society for the Performing Arts presentation of Aszure Barton & Artists next spring, I couldn't miss Happy Little Things (Waiting On a Gruff Cloud of Wanting). Barton, a Canadian, is fond of cowboy images and this piece is no exception. Who knew Canada and Texas would share a love of rodeo magic? Other works by Larry Keigwin, Fabien Prioville and Andrea Miller showed off the many talents of Juilliard's Dance Division students.

Daytime hours were spent freezing to death, deciphering subway maps, visiting friends and relatives and hitting a string of blockbuster museum shows, including The Silk Road and Robert Frank's The Americans at the America Museum of Natural History, Tim Burton and Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity at MOMA, Art of the Samurai at The Met, Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction at the Whitney, Dress Code at the International Center of Photography, Watteau to Degas at the Frick and Urs Fischer at The New Museum.

But it was the Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim that most stays with me in the art-that-stands-still category. Kandinsky's musical canvases feel fresh and transcendent. When Da Camera artistic director Sarah Rothenberg's voice came streaming through my headphones connecting Kandinsky to Schoenberg, I realized the reach of Houston is larger than we know. Rothenberg conceived and directed Kandinsky in Performance: Blue Rider Almanac as part of Works & Process at the Guggenheim. Read The New York Times review.

Finally, a New York size "thank you" to all my Facebook friends who sent me to their favorite haunts. You were with me warming my Houston heart the whole time. Although, I am sad to say I never did find time for that hot dog.