Balanchine's Jewels is catnip to dedicated ballet lovers.

Is English National Ballet's current predilection for acquiring European repertoire some kind of anti-Brexit statement, or just smart brand positioning?

Can thirty minutes of contemporary ballet say something meaningful about the modern refugee crisis? It has been the surprise of the season to find myself asking this question not once, but twice, at the Royal Ballet.

This is the comeback after the comeback-that-never-was. It's the anticipated full stage ballet after the hugely popular Youtube video. It's the press waiting to see if ballet's bad boy will do something wild. It's the fans waiting to see if Sergei Polunin really will be the second coming (he's often hailed as the modern day Nureyev). Pamela Anderson is in the audience.

Tree of Codes is a work made from a work made from a work. Based on Jonathan Safran Foer's book-form art piece, which is itself based on Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles, Wayne McGregor has fashioned a choreographic creation using a triptych of his own.

Before this Sadler's Wells Flamenco Festival-opening performance of Israel Galván's show FLA.CO.MEN, my guest wanted to know what the show would be like.

Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch are at an interesting juncture. Eight years after their eponymous founder died, and over 40 since she took over at Wuppertal, the troupe is reaching a point when, even if Bausch were alive, it would be facing change, as the older dancers in the company - many of whom have been there since the beginning - enter their late 60s.

In the annals of ballet directors, always searching for the perfect balance between heritage programming and new work, there can rarely have been a double whammy so successful. In pairing a brand new Akram Khan Giselle with Mary Skeaping's near-perfect 1971 production in one season, English National Ballet may be setting an Orwellian future against a Romantic past, contemporary dance against the most classical ballet, but they have no jarring contrast on their hands.

The criteria used by theartsdesk's critics in selecting pieces for this list are simple, but demanding: did a piece or a programme stir and shake us? Did it move us, and make us still - weeks or months afterwards - think, yes, I'd go see that again in a heartbeat?

What is light entertainment for? It won’t save the world or heal the sick or bring warring factions to the negotiating table. It’s teeth and smiles and bread and circuses on a Saturday night and it shouldn’t have to bear any greater weight. The Generation Game was never required to offer vital balm during the Three-Day Week. Barrymore didn’t nurse us all through Black Wednesday and Britain’s exit from the ERM.