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Outstanding performances all-around in this special treat for Christmas 

Despite Carlos Acosta's staging of Don Quixote feeling a little tame, The Royal Ballet's star couple dazzles. 

For three decades, Acosta has given his audiences performances of pure pleasure. As someone who had to work against the odds to reach the top, he became one of those rare classical ballet dancers whose brilliance and incredible technical achievements, wrapped up with convincing characterisation and humble charisma, have set stages alight around the world.

A youthfully fresh corps and Victor Estévez hold together this uneven double bill, with Acosta’s troubled Carmen demonstrating the challenges of adapting opera to ballet.

The audience at Sadler's Wells welcomes Carlos Acosta like an old friend. Their whole-hearted warmth extends to embrace his fledging company Acosta Danza in its UK debut. Based in Havana, Cuba, this intrepid group of dancers is rapidly forging an international reputation. Punching above their weight they arrive in London with a programme of five contrasting works, and showcasing three choreographers from the Spanish-speaking world.

Dressed in black dance clothes, he stood still front of stage, bathed in a bright spotlight as the Royal Albert Hall erupted with a standing ovation. 

Beguiled, bereaved and betrayed - William Tuckett's Elizabeth imagines the ill-fated romances of the Virgin Queen. Tuckett draws on the monarch's own writings and those of her contemporaries to fashion a full-length work, blending spoken word, dance and music to convey the tumultuous affairs of Elizabeth I. 

Many ballet fans do not find galas particularly enjoyable. We can admire our favourite dancers performing acrobatic solos, numerous fouettés and famous variations, but little space is left for the dancers to lose themselves in the roles they are playing, not to mention the limitations in terms of scenography and lighting.'Carlos Acosta – A Classical Selection' is a nice exception.

Carlos Acosta's Carmen premieres at the Royal Ballet, alongside Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun, Balanchine's Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux and Scarlett’s Viscera.

Fluttering fans and hearts in Carlos Acosta's Don Quixote, performed by the Royal Ballet in Washington.

Carlos Acosta's Don Quixote opened this week at the Royal Opera House, with Carlos Acosta as Basilio and Marianela Núñez as Kitri.

This charismatic Cuban is probably the only big dance name who could compete successfully with the Bolshoi Ballet now here in London. But then, for many years, Carlos Acosta has continuously shown persuasive pluck and daredevil tactics to his devoted audiences, many of whom are supporting him in his latest summer season programme at the Coliseum this week.

Last Friday, The Royal Ballet presented an exciting bill composed of George Balanchine’s iconic Apollo (1928) and two new ballets by acclaimed choreographers Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon. The programme was cleverly designed, since Ratmansky and Wheeldon are renowned explorers of the neoclassical style inaugurated by Balanchine.

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.

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.

Laugh-out-loud comedy is a rare find in dance, which usually elicits no more than a polite, awkward titter. However it is such comedy that is one of the chief merits of this ballet. La Fille Mal Gardée is as anxious to show off bad dancing as it is to show off the good, pleasing the audience with all manner of buffoonery.The ballet’s opening gives me a childish thrill.