It's over for another year: all the milling around the upstairs/downstairs and outdoor reaches of Tramway. No more scanning each day's diary of events trying to work out a time-line - wondering if "time-line" is really a National Review of Live Art (NRLA) euphemism for "queue". The NRLA quickly acquires sell-out status, so ticket-holders need to get in line for limited-capacity shows, and that threatens to become the image many will take away from this unrivalled, multi-faceted celebration of creative performance.

Queuing, however, is worth every moment when it brings you into contact with a solo work such as Almost the Same, Julia Bardsley's visceral excursion into the warring selves inside her (and all of us, if we lay bare our feral impulses). The sense of ritual and alchemy begins in an "ante-room" housing costumes and artefacts that hint at subversions from our apparently civilised norm: motherhood as a many-teated strap-on apron, sticks in the mind. The performance begins with Bardsley as a primitive, snarling dam (her Black incarnation) who, in giving birth to two hares, initiates the mesh of symbolism, superstition and sacrificial process that conditions and informs so many lingering concepts of female-ness, fertility and regeneration. Her evolution through Red into White - face masked, but body exposed in an assortment of straps - is played live behind a projected image of another apparently civilised self, who relentlessly chivvies Bardsley into sublimating her animalistic instincts, even when doing so necessitates acts of brutality that cannot be disguised. This film image is, however, hare-lipped, and this reminder of the feral self also produces a speech impediment Bardsley uses to reinforce her theme of "almost the same".

One little letter comes between same and shame, just as rite and right sound identical but could be poles apart. This is an epic venture, thrumming with ancient knowledge and modern insights into the roles and status accorded to women. And because Bardsley does not flinch from depicting the aggression, fear, humiliation and cruelty that attend this battle of wills, the piece leaves you unnerved, and, perhaps, more alert to the pack mentality of queuing.

By chance, rather than planning, my five days at NRLA included a cluster of performances "under glass" - the actual title of a delicate yet dark trio of pieces presented by Clod Ensemble. Three women - one flattened against a piece of turf in a glass case, another curled inside a jar, a third seated in an upright box - moved, briefly, when the light hit their container. Limited by the size and shape of their confines, they were like specimens in a cabinet of curios, and so we gawped at their agility, their agitation, their stillness.

We gawped, too, at Yann Marussich, reclining in his glass case, while his naked flesh sweated and wept blue-ness. How that blue entered his system was never made evident. But the effect of it leaving his body was exquisite, horrifying and moving. It trickled, like inky tears, from eyes, nose and mouth so his face became a cross between a map and a tribal tattoo. Did it ever seem as if this proclamation of him visibly dehydrating might endanger his health? Or that we shouldn't be looking? We toyed with these questions.

But the questions also attended Kris Verdonck's work, IN. A woman, in a maid's outfit, stands motionless. Submerged in a tank of water, albeit she's breathing from an oxygen cylinder, the sound ensuring we know she's not a waxwork. What do I gain from seeing this, rather than just reading a description of the concept? I gain a niggle of unease at Verdonck having someone else go into the tank, at the dressing-up connotations of the maid's outfit, and at my own collusion with voyeurism. It's probably the most valuable strength in the whole NRLA canon, this point of conflict that the work can stir inside your head, so that even as you are evaluating it you are re-evaluating yourself and your values and the distance between the self you are and the self you'd like to think you are.

Angie Dight's astutely devised solo, A Viva Espana, touched on the slippage between flamenco as a kitsch entertainment for tourists and an art form resonating with Spain's history and culture.

Looking like a doll inside an 8ft transparent "snow globe" full of emblematic objects, Dight interspersed the flouncing, rose-between-the-teeth, cabaret flamenco with sequences of expressive dance. A soundscore by Bruno Gallagher added another layer of truth to that artistry.

Dance was very well served in NRLA 2008. Japanese dance-maker Hiroaki Umeda moved as if electric currents were rippling through his limbs. Speed, precision, minute inflections of rhythm and angle - right down to his very fingertips, in a thrilling mix of styles that ranged from hip-hop to the impressive slow-motion and stillness of Butoh.

Held pauses were consummately deployed by Roy Peters and fellow performers Andreas Scharfenberg and Melih Gencboyaci in End of Story, a foray into starts and stops that edged the trio's interactions into a more profound reflection on how we interpret or recognise finality in action. Like Umeda, these dancers riveted your attention because of their controlled physicality.

Marcia Farquhar, on the other hand, stops you in your tracks because, even on-screen, she's such an untrammelled, vibrant life force. 12 Shooters saw her "captured" by 12 different film-makers in various modes: performing, spending time with family or friends, reminiscing, just being Marcia essentially, which is to say full of valour and foibles that can make us chortle and yet be deeply touched.

The woman is a tonic, and those who know her nd her work love her garrulous, life-affirming spirit.

Which brings me to my moment of personal heart-break, and Sheila Ghelani's beguiling Covet Me Care For Me.

Yes, I coveted one of her hand-crafted objects; yes, I took a hammer to the glass heart that held it and now I care for the contents: they are a tangible memento of Ghelani's compassionate celebration of "mongrels", be they mixed in race like her or a mix of materials like the wee be- ribboned fob-watch ticking inside heart No 122.

I'll keep it wound and polished, ready for queuing at NRLA 2009.