Rupert Christiansen

You're never too old to dance we are told nowadays. This encouraging injunction has been taken up by everyone from the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Alessandra Ferri, who have found wondrously creative ways to compensate for their declining virtuosity and stamina, to septuagenarians who insist on bopping to Abba at their grandchildren's wedding parties. I confess that in the interests of research I took to ballet classes when I was well into middle age: it was not a pretty or edifying sight. There is a lot to be said for oldies sticking to the military two-step.

Wayne McGregor: Alchemies Royal Opera House, until 6 May Shobana Jeyasingh Dance: We Caliban Sadler's Wells East

There Is Sweet Music Here: The World of Wigmore Hall By Julia Boyd I've been going to concerts at the Wigmore Hall for something like half

As a byword for depravity, the ancient city has fascinated everyone from Hollywood stars to dictators. A brilliant new history digs it up

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo were popular regulars at Washington's Kennedy Center until Trump's demented blast against decadent queerness.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo were popular regulars at Washington’s Kennedy Center until Trump’s demented blast against decadent queerness.…

Northern Ballet commits itself almost exclusively to dance as a storytelling medium, and its weakness historically has been to home in on surefire box-office titles such as A Streetcar named Desire, The Great Gatsby and Nineteen Eighty-Four, which lose more than they gain by being deprived of their words. But adapting the source of the

Everyone supports free speech – until someone says something they dislike. Anthropologist Matei Candea breaks it down into three main points

Historians have been too kind to the famed military ruler, who cared little about civilisation and burnt through armies at a terrifying rate