
Russian State Ballet of Siberia – La Fille mal gardée – Basingstoke
★★★✰✰ The Siberian company performs its Fille mal gardée with good heart and neat feet.

Jonathan Burrows, Matteo Fargion & Hugo Glendinning – 52 Portraits – London
★★★✰✰ The portraits are probably not a way into dance for someone who wasn’t already interested – and it’s probably better to watch them in small doses. However, they do remind us of something rather lovely…

5 Questions to Mavin Khoo – Artistic Director ŻfinMalta Dance Ensemble, choreographer, rehearsal director
Malta’s national contemporary dance company, ŻfinMalta Dance Ensemble, are touring to the UK for the first time – we have a word with Artistic Director Mavin Khoo…

English National Ballet – Giselle – London
★★★✰✰ Elisa Badenes and Cesar Corrales delivered a good professional show, if it was not the runaway success I had perhaps hoped for.

San Francisco Ballet – Haffner Symphony, Fragile Vessels (premiere), In the Countenance of Kings – San Francisco
★★★★✰ The company’s first regular-season commission from Czech choreographer Jiří Bubeníček, “Fragile Vessels”, is a 40-minute meditation on love, loss and reconciliation.

Royal Ballet – Woolf Works – London
★★★✰✰ The ballet’s narrative interest depends on the dancer, and both performers are magnificent – different in tone and physicality, though not markedly so.

New York City Ballet – La Sonnambula, Prodigal Son, Firebird, Allegro Brillante, Swan Lake, Four Temperaments – New York
★★★★✰ Sara Mearns, who made her name as Swan Queen at the age of nineteen, is still the most thrilling Odette around.

Scottish Ballet – Hansel and Gretel – Glasgow
★★★★✰ …a great communal effort by the whole company and one that stretches out to embrace kids in the cities it plays to – showing new generations how relevant and effortlessly entertaining ballet can be.

English National Ballet – Giselle – London
★★★★✰ The magic in this production isn’t simply its bewitching ambience but also its harnessing of centuries-old themes in a way that resonates today.