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

When you're talking about dancers, the old adage about genius being 99% perspiration has a point. You have to work damned hard just to be average in professional dance; to be good, like Akram Khan and Israel Galván are good, takes sweat (and tears and blood, like as not). Still, all the perspiration in the world won't avail if you don't have that 1% of inspiration, a little blue flame of a pilot light in your soul, ready to spark the gas jets of hard work into fiery life, rather than just a lot of hot air.

^{Akram Khan is unexpectedly softly-spoken.}

^{How do you know Wayne McGregor? Dance-goers with long memories might remember Wayne McGregor as the wunderkind who founded his own company and became resident choreographer at The Place aged just 22. Lovers of contemporary dance will be familiar with his company Random Dance, which boasts some of the best dancers in the business and periodically brings sophisticated, hi-tech pieces to Sadler’s Wells.}

School’s out for summer, even Parliament is on recess, and the streets around my house are suddenly devoid of children, as families make for the hills (or at least the beach). It should be dead season for all but prommers (and the suffering residents of Edinburgh) but ballet in London has had the most extraordinary week of first-class acts, with the Mariinsky at the Royal Opera House, Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant at the Coliseum, and now the BalletBoyz’ 10-strong troupe The Talent at the Roundhouse in Camden.

Having a strong company style is usually no bad thing, especially if – as with San Francisco Ballet – the main component of it is a commitment to excellence. It has been impressive watching the gritty energy with which, night after night, the American visitors to Paris dish up meaty triple bills (most pieces coming in at 35 minutes or longer) and serve them with éclat. Polish and professionalism like this help dancers keep going through a gruelling tour, and ensure audiences go away happy. But you can have too much of a good thing.

The ballerina Sylvie Guillem was always out on a limb, even when she was the classical star at the Royal Ballet in the '90s and early '00s. She was French, she was tall, she was unbelievably flexible, she was staggeringly charismatic, and she had no fear of setting her terms and saying “non” if they didn’t suit.

The Flames of Paris, given its London premiere by the Bolshoi Ballet this weekend, was Alexei Ratmansky's farewell present to the Moscow company which he directed from 2004 to 2008. In his final months at the Bolshoi he talked with me in his office about his approach to revising this landmark historical ballet, and the conditions inside the theatre that he would soon be leaving after a turbulent five years.

No one ever accused of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker of thinking small. Or not thinking, for that matter. Her international career began with a bang, when with only her second work she created Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich. And Reich’s music, filled with repetitive figures, harmonic rhythm and canons, is not a million miles – even if it’s 600 years – away from the ars subtilior of Avignon, De Keersmaeker’s new musical focus.

Liam Scarlett, the young dancer whose Jack the Ripper ballet, Sweet Violets, was one of the talking points of Covent Garden last season, has been appointed full-time Artist-in-Residence at the Royal Ballet, taking up the third place in a new creative triumvirate for the company.