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Alexei Ratmanksy's Concerto DSCH is the highlight of a meaty programme, also featuring Fokine's 1910 Firebird and Ashton's Marguerite and Armand

The Mariinsky Ballet treats London audiences with some of Balanchine's finest story ballets : Apollo and A Midsummer Night's Dream 

It’s hard to think of a full-length ballet in the current repertory of the London companies that’s are much straight-up fun to watch as the English National Ballet's Le Corsaire.

Rudolf Nureyev was born in 1938 and died in 1993, making 2013 the 75th anniversary of his birth and the 20th of his death. English National Ballet have cause to be deeply grateful to Nureyev: he gave them (in their previous incarnation as London Festival Ballet) their popular Romeo and Juliet, and lent his box-office appeal as a principal dancer to numerous other productions.

Coppelia is based on a story by a German (E.T.A. Hoffman’s The Sandman), was first turned into a ballet by Frenchmen (the music is by Delibes) and staged in Paris with an Italian ballerina, and was then revived and made popular by Russians. This production has choreography by another Frenchman, Roland Petit, and has been brought to London by Moscow’s Stanislavsky Ballet.

Boston Ballet seriously want to impress London. Their 50th anniversary celebrations begin at home in the autumn, but it’s this return to England after 30 years that marks the official start of the party, and artistic director Mikko Nissinen has put together two serious, strong programmes for the capital’s ballet connoisseurs at the London Coliseum.

Derek Deane’s Swan Lake in-the-round has apparently perennial box-office appeal: this is the English National Ballet production’s seventh season at the Royal Albert Hall since its première there in 1997, besides other performances on tour.

Goodness, Northern Ballet are an appealing company. Their dancers are cheerful, charismatic and talented; their ethos one of hard work and unflagging dedication to outreach, bringing the delights of ballet to as wide an audience as possible across their mostly northern catchment area. A new full-length story ballet based on F.

When the cast sheet warns the audience that there will be gunshots in each act, you know you are not at The Nutcracker. Kenneth MacMillan’s 1978 ballet Mayerling is famously about sex, obsession, madness and death – a cocktail that apparently sells enough tickets to ensure its regular revival at the Royal Opera House.

Be warned – after an evening of concentrated Frederick Ashton, you may well find yourself exhibiting the physical symptoms of ballet ecstasy.

John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet (set to Prokofiev’s score) is the ballet that made me fall in love with ballet.

With all the new works put on by The Royal Ballet this year, we haven’t seen as much of Kenneth MacMillan’s choreography as usual. This triple bill of mid-century works is an in-your-face reminder of what an omission that is: Concerto, Las Hermanas and Requiem show MacMillan at his versatile best, and The Royal Ballet are on top form to match.

FAR stands for Flesh in the Age of Reason, the title of Roy Porter’s last, magisterial work (tagline: “How the Enlightenment transformed the way we see our bodies and souls”). Porter’s book is a history of the relationship between flesh and spirit in the 18th century.

With the triple bill Viscera / Infra / Fool’s Paradise, The Royal Ballet have confirmed the status of their new holy trinity of choreographers: Wayne McGregor, Christopher Wheeldon and Liam Scarlett.

When The Grand Tour was premièred in 1971, the cast of celebrities it satirises were still well known, even though their 1930s heyday had passed. The problem with this rather lovely little work now is that its references are just too far in the past: neither the dancers nor the audience know who these exaggerated oddballs – Gertrude Lawrence, Theda Bara – were, or what they were famous for.

Opposites Attract was the title chosen to tie three pieces together in Birmingham Royal Ballet’s first triple bill at Sadler’s Wells this week, but that was optimistic: these three were so different in both style and quality that it was hard to find any affinity between them, or any sense of the company as a whole.

Swan Lake is so iconic that describing it in a review seems superfluous. The idea of it, moreover, so dominates people’s perceptions of ballet, mine included, that before Monday night’s performance I was worried that I would be lost for fresh words, silenced by the weight Tchaikovsky and Petipa’s swans have acquired in the 117 years since they first fluttered across the stage in St Petersburg.

From the moment the curtain went up, there was no doubt that San Francisco Ballet had another evening of fabulous ballet in store for the audience at Sadler’s Wells, many of whom had been there the night before for Programme A.

San Francisco Ballet, one of the oldest, biggest and most prestigious American companies, was last here eight years ago; their return – to judge by the buzzing crowd packing out Sadler’s Wells last night – has been eagerly awaited.

Prokofiev’s Cinderella is not the easiest ballet to love. In his Romeo and Juliet a timeless story and lush, action-driven score ensure that even mediocre productions are heartbreaking.

Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 invited artists from different disciplines, mainly the visual arts, dance and music, to respond to Titian's three magnifient paintings of the Diana and Actaeon myth. The results are displayed in an exhibition at the National Gallery (alongside Titian's originals), and in an triple bill of new ballets at the Royal Opera House.

Dance GB is a collaboration between the UK's three national dance companies, Scottish Ballet, National Dance Company Wales, and English National Ballet.

To sit directly under the splendid chiaroscuro dome of St Paul's Cathedral, with angels, apostles and Christ himself glittering down from mosaiced arches, is to be in the middle of astonishing beauty.

The Royal Ballet's revival of The Prince of the Pagodas is an extraordinary achievement in many ways, not least because the ballet has an undistinguished history.

The works in this triple bill were all created by choreographers in their twenties and two of them are new works made for the Royal Ballet this season, making for an evening of fresh, exuberant modern ballet. The Royal Opera House had given over the entire Amphitheatre to student tickets for this performance, so there was a youthful buzz in the audience to match the youthful buzz on stage.

The Royal Ballet's 2011 reimagining of Lewis Carroll's beloved Alice stories was a glorious triumph, as proved by its immediate, slightly reworked revival for the 2012 season.