Carlos Acosta’s idea of putting live music first and foremost in BRB’s latest mixed bill was a no-brainer. The Midlands-based company, directed by Acosta since early 2020, is unique among British ballet companies in being able to call on its own full-time orchestra (the Royal Ballet has to share theirs with the Opera), and it happens to be a first-class band.

To the international world of ballet, Clement Crisp was the British critic to fear for half a century. Crisp's dance reviews for the Financial Times – "the pink 'un" – from 1970 until 2020 were legendary for their passionate fastidiousness about ballerinas and high style, their acuity about rising talents and the difficulties of creativity, and – often – their ferocity, when he saw something he thought a blight.

When a great performer takes on the running of a ballet company, the effect on its dancers can be transformative. It happened when Mikhail Baryshnikov took on American Ballet Theatre in the 1980s. It’s been happening at English National Ballet since 2012 under Tamara Rojo.

Two households, both alike in dignity … and both launching their respective seasons with a production of Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet.

It was a night of multiple firsts: the first live performance at Sadler's Wells in seven months (the place hasn’t been dark for so long since the War); the official first day of Carlos Acosta’s tenure as the new director of Birmingham Royal Ballet; and the premiere of his first company commission – an ambitious piece involving live orchestra, 12 dancers and a sorcerer’s handbook

With forelock-tugging celebrations of a choreographer who died 25 years ago and a summer visit by the Mariinsky the highest-profile events in the calendar, 2017 may not be remembered as a vintage year for British dance.

There are different ways of celebrating a great artist’s legacy, and I suppose they have to coexist. One approach is raptly to admire his or her acknowledged masterpieces, the equivalent of making straight for Guernica or the Mona Lisa.

Koen Kessels is on a mission to change the culture around music in ballet. Anyone who has heard the Belgian conduct will know that he is the right person for the job: Kessels makes the classic scores come alive in the pit like nobody else I’ve heard. I will never forget a performance of Swan Lake with Birmingham Royal Ballet in which he had us all pinned to our seats with excitement, shaping every phrase of the familiar music as if it had never been heard before.

Shakespeare has always been a fertile source of inspiration for story ballets. Plays which exist in multiple dance versions include Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew and Hamlet, while Shakespeare sources have often moved choreographers to their best work: Ashton's Dream, MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, and Christopher Wheeldon's recent Winter's Tale for the Royal Ballet are all highlights of their respective creators' oeuvres.

International Dance Festival Birmingham (IDFB) is one of the unsung heroes not just of dance in Britain, but of festivals. It treats anyone within striking distance of the West Midlands to an exciting range of performers and public dance events over three weeks, and is cleverly scheduled in May – when lengthening days and bank holidays make us want to go out and have a good time, but it's not quite warm enough for camping.