What is truth? Is it fixed or fluid, personal or universal? Does it require hard evidence or merely faith? These are the areas of interest poked and prodded in this co-production between the Traverse and Peepolykus, the company which previously brought The Hound of the Baskervilles to the stage. The result is an eccentric romp through the life of Arthur Conan Doyle, a famously ridiculed figurehead for the spirit world in his later years, which ponders – none too deeply, but with immense good humour – the conflict between fideism and rationalism.

Well, if De Keersmaeker made us work hard for our enlightenment earlier in the week, we more than get our reward with her triumphant, astonishing Cesena in the second part of her double-programme designed for the Avignon Festival.

True originals are those who keep contemporary arts bright, and one of the handful of dance performers who set the 1980s and 90s on fire was a bony, white-skinned, bleakly witty and garrulous physical clown with a taste for the extreme called Nigel Charnock. The news of his death last night from cancer at the age of only 52 feels painful to anyone who suffered and laughed so much at some of his merciless works.

“Do you feel morally superior to the Taliban? Well, do you?” And we’re off, with another of director/choreographer Lloyd Newson’s interrogations of a taboo subject. DV8 Physical Theatre is 25 years old this season, yet if anything, it, and Newson, have become more challenging, not less as the years go by. Gone are the lyrically silent pieces of the 1980s, and instead movement is almost always now allied with talking; indeed, talking has become Newson’s main mode of communication, as his urgent need to vanquish our beliefs and replace them with his becomes ever stronger.

Slava’s Snowshow is a Christmas package you don’t want to have unwrapped for you by someone else's description - it’s a fantastical, childlike, theatrical experience that for many is among the most profoundly delighting of their theatre-going experience, for others an empty whimsy.

Some of the bravest people in theatre operate in the dance world. Lloyd Newson’s new DV8 production, Can We Talk About This?, tackles just as contentious and satirically explosive a subject as Javier de Frutos did in Eternal Damnation to Sancho and Sanchez, the luridly anti-Papist work that got him death threats and a BBC ban in 2009.

Beijing International Fringe Festival, virtually unheard of in the UK, closed last Sunday after three weeks’ showcasing the best talent in drama, musical theatre, dance and experimental theatre in China. It was conceived in 2008 as a small local festival using university performance spaces to give voice to young directors and young talent. Back then it comprised a mere 10 productions. This year there were 54 productions in 11 venues around Beijing. 

What you see in the picture is the money shot, and yes, it's a miracle that you won't fully believe, even as you watch it. But there are plenty of other belief-defying miracles in the Guangdong Acrobats’ version of Swan Lake - just don’t make the mistake of calling it a ballet, especially not in earshot of the haute-couture Mariinsky Ballet, currently up the road at Covent Garden.

The Flying Karamazov Brothers give a new meaning to the word “practised”. Their first stage show in 1981 was called Juggling and Cheap Theatrics - a smart title that they could have kept for the show they bring to London’s West End, largely made of routines that this celebrated US comedy-juggling act have been doing for decades. It’s weird to see in YouTubes of their early performances some of the material I watched last night at the Vaudeville. Still, the fact is those old juggling routines remain mesmerising to the eye, even if their humour is as worn-through as the bum of Seasick Steve’s overalls.

Dropped trousers, audience participation and an onstage skiffle band fronted by a singer/songwriter boasting specs by way of Buddy Holly: what has become of the National Theatre's Lyttelton auditorium? Well, let's just say that for the entire first act of One Man, Two Guvnors, it's got to be easily the giddiest theatrical address in town. And when the momentum flags, as it does somewhat after the interval, not to worry. By that point, Richard Bean's Goldoni rewrite has generated enough goodwill that you all but float home.