The story of Carmen is catnip to choreographers. No matter how many times this 180-year-old narrative has been tweaked and reframed in art, theatre, opera, dance and film, they keep coming back for more – which is curious when you consider that Carmen began life in a saucy French novella read in smoking rooms and gentlemen’s clubs.

Dance lovers have had a better time of it this year as the performance sector starts to find its feet again. In the wake of a general cull of independent dance companies, 2023 has seen signs of fresh growth.

The story of Edward Scissorhands may not seem an obvious Christmas subject, but it couldn’t be a more overt call for goodwill to all men. And there’s a hint of The Nutcracker about Matthew Bourne’s dance version, too.

Dance lovers with no access to a major city could feel genuinely hard done by were it not for Dance Consortium. This sainted organisation works to bring a company from overseas each autumn to a dozen or so large-scale theatres across the UK and Ireland – theatres whose dance offering might otherwise rarely extend beyond the latest Strictly spin-off.

With acrobatics at this level, they make it all look so easy, it’s possible for an audience to become complacent.

The more Wayne McGregor’s superb Woolf Works is staged, the richer it seems to become. It has started a third run at Covent Garden since its premiere there in 2015, which, considering the house lost over a year of performances, is some achievement. It is the mark of an instant modern classic.

Filmed ballets involve a different way of watching: you may know a piece well, but you aren’t used to staring into its lead dancers’ eyes as they perform their roles. Not all dancers give good close-up, either. But a new film by the Oscar-winning director Asif Kapadia of Akram Khan’s Creature, made for English National Ballet in 2021, has transformed the original live version into a moving drama.

At the arthouse end of contemporary dance no one expects a packed house, still less serial packed houses for more than a week. Yet Sadler’s Wells was fully confident when it invited the dancer-choreographer Jules Cunningham – one of its New Wave Associates – to premiere a new work on its main stage.

What do you mean you haven’t heard of the newsboys’ strike of 1899? It’s a classic David and Goliath story: a group of New York kids selling newspapers for Joseph Pulitzer (him of the prize), who take a stand when their boss tries to charge them 20% extra to buy their “papes”.

When Natalia Osipova comes a-calling, a choreographer doesn’t say no. The Bolshoi-trained ballerina, having commandeered all the prime roles in her nine years at the Royal Ballet, is always looking to conquer new territory. In a string of self-curated solo shows she has made forays into contemporary dance as well as staking out her supremacy as a dance-actress, often commissioning new work.