Yolanda Sonnabend: designer of MacMillan's 'neurotic' ballets

YOLANDA SONNABEND: DESIGNER OF MACMILLAN'S 'NEUROTIC' BALLETS The late dance designer's views on bums, 'Swan Lake', and seeing into the choreographer's mind

The late dance designer's views on bums, 'Swan Lake', and seeing into the choreographer's mind

Ever since Diaghilev’s day the relationship of dance movement to its visual design has been a lively, sometimes combative affair. Sometimes people leave whistling the set, saying shame about the dance; other times they hate the set, love the dance. As with the relationship of dance to music, the fit of look to movement can be decisive in why a new ballet escapes the curse of ephemerality and becomes a firm memory that people wish to revisit. It directs the audience how to read it.

Raven Girl/Connectome, Royal Ballet

Plot holes gape, but Wayne McGregor's story ballet is still a visual and aural feast

Wayne McGregor wasn't anyone's idea of a ballet man when he was appointed choreographer in residence at the Royal Ballet in 2007. Before then, and since, his work has been abstract, spiky, verging on dysmorphic. His interest lay not in human stories but in the snap of synapses and the speed with which the brain can relay messages to a hyper-flexible body.

Corin Sworn: Max Mara Art Prize for Women, Whitechapel Gallery

CORIN SWORN: MAX MARA ART PRIZE FOR WOMEN, WHITECHAPEL GALLERY Impostors and stolen identities explored in an installation inspired by the Commedia dell’Arte

Impostors and stolen identities explored in an installation inspired by the Commedia dell’Arte

Glasgow-based Corin Sworn is the fifth winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women. Every two years a British artist is chosen on the basis of a proposal, rather than existing work. The fashion house then supports the project with funding, a bespoke, six-month residency in Italy and, following the Whitechapel Gallery show, an exhibition at the Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, where the HQ of the family-run business is located.

Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World, Globe Theatre

ANDREW LOGAN'S ALTERNATIVE MISS WORLD, GLOBE THEATRE The delightfully shambolic talent show that's become a national treasure

The delightfully shambolic talent show that's become a national treasure

On Saturday at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Alternative Miss World was staged for the 13th time. Having launched this gloriously tacky event in his Hackney studio in 1972, artist Andrew Logan promises to carry on the tradition until the day he dies; but it’s last showing – at the Roundhouse five years ago – nearly bankrupted him. This time round, crowd funding has helped solve the problem.

Metamorphosis: Titian 2012, National Gallery

METAMORPHOSIS: TITIAN 2012: Titian inspires three artists to produce new work plus costumes and sets for three new ballets

Titian inspires three artists to produce new work plus costumes and sets for three new ballets

Three paintings by Titian depicting stories from Ovid’s poem Metamorphoses welcome you to the National Gallery’s exhibition Metamorphosis: Titian 2012. Diana and Callisto shows Diana casting out the pregnant nymph Callisto from her company. Diana and Actaeon depicts the young Actaeon out hunting and stumbling into a sacred grotto where Diana and her nymphs are bathing; and in The Death of Actaeon, we see the goddess exacting vengeance on the intruder by turning him into a stag to be torn to pieces by his own hounds.

DVD: The Colour of Pomegranates

A rare chance to relish the work of a maverick master of visual cinema

A master of visual cinema, primus inter pares, Sergei Paradjanov was a law unto himself in Soviet cinema of the 1960-1980s; his body of work from the Caucasus in that period is as visually innovative and brightly colourful as anything in cinema. A “magician in cinema”, indeed. Paradjanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates is being reissued with very welcome and full additional commentary.

Design Secrets of Cinderella and The Nutcracker

Ballet designers Peter Farmer and John Macfarlane on the challenges of designing best-loved fairytales

The designer of a fairytale ballet is far, far more important than the choreographer. It's those visions that lodge themselves in children's heads, in adults' memories, embedded with the music. And at no time more potently than Christmas when it's time for The Nutcracker and Cinderella.

Behind the Scene at the Museum: The Staging of the Diaghilev Exhibition

Tentacles across all the arts - the inside story and detailed guide

Sergei Diaghilev was not short of self-belief. He appointed himself the man to introduce European modern art to Russia and then Russian modern art to Europe as the 20th century began, and in doing so he defined himself as the ultimate artistic director, as the remarkable, tentacular exhibition at the V&A Museum that opened yesterday shows. Reviewed elsewhere on theartsdesk, the exhibition's mounting has thrown up extraordinary inside dramas - the telltale paper found in the boning of a 1916 tutu, the unlikely discovery of a stellar bust in a junk shop, and the legendary artists' sweat that no cleaning can obliterate.

Sergei Diaghilev was not short of self-belief. He appointed himself the man to introduce European modern art to Russia and then Russian modern art to Europe as the 20th century began, and in doing so he defined himself as the ultimate artistic director, as the remarkable, tentacular exhibition at the V&A Museum that opened yesterday shows. Reviewed elsewhere on theartsdesk, the exhibition's mounting has thrown up extraordinary inside dramas - the telltale paper found in the boning of a 1916 tutu, the unlikely discovery of a stellar bust in a junk shop, and the legendary artists' sweat that no cleaning can obliterate.

theartsdesk Q&A: Stage Designer Es Devlin

After a hiatus of five years, the stage designer has a new play at the Arcola

For the past five years British stage designer Es Devlin has been creating extraordinarily ambitious and imaginative sets for some of the biggest crowd-pullers in the music industry, from Take That to Lady Gaga. But this week she returns to her theatrical roots with a new play, Pieces of Vincent, by David Watson at the small but prestigious Arcola Theatre in London.

theartsdesk Q&A: Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips

TAD AT 5: A SELECTION OF OUR Q&A HIGHLIGHTS – Psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips

The leading psychoanalyst talks fashion, therapy and about becoming an art curator

Born in 1954, Adam Phillips is a leading psychoanalyst, literary critic and author. For 17 years he worked as a child psychotherapist in the NHS before moving into private practice to work with adults. As well as being a self-confessed "sceptical" psychoanalyst, he is also known as something of "the literati's analyst of choice". His many, often playfully titled books have included The Art of Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life (1993); On Flirtation: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Uncommitted Life (1995); and On Kindness (with Barbara Taylor, 2009). In 2006 he edited the New Penguin edition of the Sigmund Freud Reader. In collaboration with Artangel, and partner and fashion curator Judith Clark, he has co-curated The Concise Dictionary of Dress, an evocative art installation that "redescribes dress in terms of anxiety, wish and desire". He lives with Clark in Notting Hill, London.