The question with Moscow City Ballet is: should I judge them on what they are, or on what they claim to be? The touring company, a self-supporting private enterprise, takes productions of classic ballets (The Nutcracker, Swan Lake et al) round provincial theatres in this and a few other countries. By the standards of pure classical ballet, the product they peddle is decidedly second-, if not third-rate: the dancers come from the fringes of the classical scene in Russia and the Ukraine and the choreography is simple, and even then often poorly executed.

You usually know a good piece or performance when you see one, but sometimes you only identify a great one as such significantly after the fact. What better way to test a work's durability, then, than by seeing what remains of it in the memory after six or 12 months? I admit this "best of" exercise is pretty subjective, but 2014 was such a rich year for dance that I've had to be ruthless: an item only makes my list if I still feel excited when I recall it.

Every Nutcracker has its day, and every day has its Nutcracker. But sometimes history repeats itself, and so it was that I found myself last night in Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre, scene of my own childhood encounters with ballet, preparing to watch Peter Darrell’s Nutcracker, the very same production that I and thousands of other Scottish children were raised on between 1973 and winter 1996-7, when the (by then rather battered-looking) Christmas favourite by the company's founder was last performed.

Unusually, English National Ballet’s Nutcracker finds itself in an empty field this year. Three Decembers ago, the second time out for Wayne Eagling’s production, it had to contend with Matthew Bourne’s version and the Royal Ballet’s, not to mention the fallout from a BBC fly-on-the-wall series that had brutally exposed its difficult conception.

For those who’ve seen one too many Nutcrackers, nothing says Christmas better than a Matthew Bourne production at Sadler’s Wells. A man whose mantelpiece is overflowing with Tony and Olivier awards is a safe bet for entertainrment – even when the production in question looks at first glance unlikely: Bourne’s 2005 danced version of Edward Scissorhands, the 1990 Tim Burton movie which is part Gothic fairy tale, part moral fable, part 1950s soap opera.

Christopher Wheeldon’s hard-working mix of skewed classical ballet, vaudeville and Victorian theatrical magic achieved through state-of-the-art technique wasn’t much liked by theartsdesk’s critics on its first and second outings. Marvelling at it on DVD as I worked on the notes for that release, I wondered why. Now it’s clearer that many of the special effects and characterisations work best in close up. But for all that it’s an inventive if overlong entertainment, its occasional treacle quotient fine for seasonal cheer.

There is a special poignancy to these performances of Sacred Monsters, Sylvie Guillem and Akram Khan's terrific 2006 joint show.

The 1871 ballet that goes by the name of Don Quixote has always been a challenge to stage. Barely a tenth of its two hours-plus concerns the titular knight and his crackpot wanderings. The rest is fixed like a town hall security camera on the non-events of a square in Barcelona, where a flighty barmaid and a feckless barber fall in and out of love every few seconds while the townspeople stand about and watch.

How long should a dance programme be? Opera and theatre habitués can be surprised by outings to contemporary dance, where the pieces might be shorter than the intervals, and a 7:30 start could see you comfortably on the 9:15 train home. But the early train is in no danger from Rambert’s new programme, their annual showcase of contemporary creations at Sadler’s Wells, which features one world première, one London première, and one revival from this time last year, and last night came in at a handsome two and a half hours.

Were it not for William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, the vocal and instrumental ensemble he started in Paris in the 1970s, the beauties of the musical French Baroque might have remained a dusty fact of pre-Revolutionary history. As it is, there is barely a singer, player or conductor now performing Lully, Couperin, Rameau, Charpentier et al who has not benefited from the life’s work of this diligent conductor-musicologist. Through him, their arts are indeed flourishing.