Manon is the planet around which a series of moons orbit, locked in place by her gravitational pull. There is Des Grieux, who gives up his seminary studies for nights of pleasure; there is her brother Lescaut, who translates her into cash; and there is Monsieur GM, the aristocrat who wants her body, both to possess it and to display it. They all see her as an object of desire, and their desires set the plot in motion, spinning ultimately to destruction.

In TV's seasonal rush of Spooks, Downton etc, we must also hail the sterling (if gruesome) work going on at the FX channel. Alongside series two of The Walking Dead, they've thrown in the additional delights of gory French cop thriller Braquo and, last night, we saw the debut of the weird and scary American Horror Story.

Is it nostalgic to constantly revisit the history of the royal family? In this new play by Nicholas Wright, which opened last night, we travel back in time to 1980 when the aged Wallis Simpson - widow of the abdicated King Edward VIII - lived as a recluse in a mansion in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris. Despite the fact that a national treasure (Sheila Hancock) is starring in the play, is this a subject worth looking at again?

We know (we have the analytics) that quite a few TAD readers are not averse to a bit of arty burlesque – our candid interview with striptease artist Ursula Martinez was read by many thousands. The latest contenders in the burgeoning titillation-as-art scene are Cabaret New Burlesque who finished a three night run last night at the Charing Cross Theatre in London (it will be back, they promise).

Waiting for Woody Allen to turn in a half-decent movie is bit like inching through a recession. The green shoots of recovery are constantly hoped for, but slow to show. Now and then the new one will come along and seem marginally less dire, but prove all too chimerical. How many of the films in the last decade does anyone remember for the right reasons? And don't say Vicky Cristina Barcelona with its atrocious voiceover and pervy lesbo snog.

William Glock once claimed that Pierre Boulez could literally vomit at music he believed to be substandard. I wonder what he would have made of my friend, who fled at the interval of the opening concert of the Southbank festival on Friday blaming Boulez's Domaines for setting off a panic attack. Her physical response was certainly a welcome corrective to the nonchalance with which the critical world increasingly greets Boulez's language, many of whom still insist that the days of serialism provoking anger or revulsion are in the distant past. Boulez can still upset.

The star ballerina Sylvie Guillem was rehearsing in London when she heard about the cataclysmic Japanese earthquake last spring, and the devastating tsunami in its aftermath. It was an apocalyptic blow that she felt personally. Since her first visit there as a teenager, the internationally renowned dancer has been drawn back to Japan year after year, winning legions of friends and supporters, the culture’s aesthetic clarity and spareness influencing her taste, and complementing her own evolution from classical ballerina assoluta into contemporary dancer stupenda.

A beguiling shadow play greets and enchants on arrival: the silhouettes of three ballerinas, each performing an arabesque, are cast upon the wall as you enter. The effect, as their softly delineated forms dip and slowly rotate, is mesmerising. It’s also an apt opener to an exhibition devoted to exploring how Degas strove to achieve a sense of fluidity and movement in his paintings of dancers, a subject for which he is chiefly known.

Warning to hunky French jazz pianists: beware a slim, raven-haired Englishwoman who looks like Anne Hathaway but goes by the name of Emma and will up and leave you the second her long-standing chum, Dex, crosses la Manche to extend rather more than a main by way of welcome. Sound unfair?

Street art – or graffiti to give the old-money name by which many still know it – gets people going. Worthless or priceless? Criminal or cultural? Earlier this week theartsdesk carried a review of the Channel 4 documentary Graffiti Wars about the street rivalry between Banksy and Robbo. Rarely has a television review prompted so many readers to write in and comment on the site. But whichever way you slice it, it’s a vagabond art form whose practitioners are used to dodging the law and shrouding their ID behind a nom de guerre. This new set of photographs captures something of the danger and the clandestine thrill associated with street art and graffiti.

Street art – or graffiti to give the old-money name by which many still know it – gets people going. Worthless or priceless? Criminal or cultural? Earlier this week theartsdesk carried a review of the Channel 4 documentary Graffiti Wars about the street rivalry between Banksy and Robbo. Rarely has a television review prompted so many readers to write in and comment on the site. But whichever way you slice it, it’s a vagabond art form whose practitioners are used to dodging the law and shrouding their ID behind a nom de guerre. This new set of photographs captures something of the danger and the clandestine thrill associated with street art and graffiti.