Northern Ballet do a challenging job really well: on a mid-scale touring company budget and doing all the things mid-scale touring companies have to do (tour, obviously, but also outreach and audience-building and Christmas ballets for children), they manage to create a constant stream of new work, and have built up a real competence in storytelling on stage. But what they don't get to do is perform the greats of the classical ballet repertoire, either 19th or 20th century.

At a festive ceremony on Tuesday night at The Hospital Club in central London, the winners were announced for this year's h.Club 100 Awards. The distinguished broacaster John Simpson (pictured below) gave an impassioned keynote address about the value of the UK's creative industries which concluded with amusing advice on the wisdom of eating kedgeree. The comedian Stuart Goldsmith compered with wit, flair and sangfroid.

I can imagine Monica Mason, the artistic director who commissioned Christopher Wheeldon's 2011 Alice, feeling pretty pleased with herself as she looked around the Covent Garden auditorium last night at an audience buzzing with excitement for the first performance of the new season.

Of the many good reasons for seeing Akram Khan’s 2016 remake of Giselle – his work is often a headline event, for one – the most compelling is the company performing it. English National Ballet used to be the poor relation of its plusher sister national flagship in WC2. Not any more.

There are half as many performances of La Bayadère in this Mariinsky tour as performances of Swan Lake (four vs eight). The preponderance of Swan Lake is driven by audience demand, but if audiences knew what was good for them, they'd demand more Bayadère: this lavish, thrilling production catches the spirit of the Mariinsky far better than their rather pallid Swan Lake.

There are two approaches to a triple bill: make all three pieces similar so you get one crowd with definite tastes, or make them very different so you have a chance of pleasing everyone. The Contrasts bill that the Mariinsky ballet showed at the Royal Opera House was, as its title suggests, firmly in the latter camp.

It's a Cinderella story: Xander Parish was plucked from obscurity in the Royal Ballet corps and trained by the Mariinsky to dance the greatest roles in the repertoire. Now, not only is he the first Briton to join the historic Russian company, he has also just been promoted to Principal after last night's performance of Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House.

One of the most Russian things you can do in ballet is dance Don Quixote, which is 100 percent set in Spain. Don't think too hard about it, and definitely don't think too hard about the plot (which is barely there).

The Hospital Club’s annual h.Club100 awards celebrate the most influential and innovative people working in the UK’s creative industries, with nominations from the worlds of film and fashion, art, advertising, theatre, music, television and more. This year they are teaming up with theartsdesk.com – the home of online arts journalism in the UK – to add a brand new award to the line-up.

Years ago, MC14/22 (Ceci est mon corps), the Angelin Preljoçaj piece with which this Scottish Ballet double bill opens, made a deep impression on Christopher Hampson.