Of all the annual art exhibitions, New Contemporaries causes the most debate among your dear Culture section.  Take last year for example, which, in all honesty, annoyed the team here by celebrating a decidedly average selection, punctuated with a few truly wonderful artists (you can find our muted reaction here).  This year, there is no mistaking it.  The judges have hit on a winner.  Forget the fact that it’s both themed and annual, they have put together one of the most interesting group shows of the year.

Selected this year by artists Nairy Baghramian, Rosalind Nashashibi and the duo Cullinan Richards, we can handpick a selection of artists from the twenty-nine artists who would be worth the entrance fee alone (a turn of phrase, you understand.  It’s free).  The Swiss-born Simon Senn is by far and away a Because favourite.  His performance videos are delightfully esoteric while maintaining a balance between the playful yet menacing.  Alongside Polish filmmaker Piotr Krzymowski, the Hong Kong-born Tony Law, Scot Oliver Osbourne, there are also some women.  Most notably perhaps the two most exciting artists in the exhibition: Tara Langford and Lauren Godfrey.  Langford’s a printmaker, Godfrey an installation artist who once could have put a 43-foot beached whale into the old Dicksmith Gallery at the bottom of Brick Lane.  What’s great about this show is that practically all of the artists have a distinct aesthetic, craft and set of questions that they’re looking to explore.  Like any good storyteller, it leaves you wanting more.

New Contemporaries 2012 is at the ICA until 13 January 2013.

Matthew Bourne won’t take credit for revitalising contemporary dance – but he did. The crowning glory to an already glittering career was his all-male ballet of Swan Lake. Playing on nearly every continent, it’s the longest-running ballet in London’s West End and New York’s Broadway, and, when televised, was the most watched arts programme on British television. The maestro choreographer returns to both Tchaikovsky and to Sadler’s Wells, the site of Swan Lake’s debut, for the world premiere of Sleeping Beauty.

Bourne lets his imagination run away with him as fairies and goblins converge in this gothic reverie. Cursed to sleep for a hundred years, we first meet our heroine Aurora at her Christening in 1890, but are soon transported with her to an unsettlingly familiar twenty-first century. Aurora’s story is a dazzling and haunting romance, and a chronicle of the magical, the melancholic, the mysterious and the miraculous. Matthew Bourne is a Svengali of the stage who mesmerises audiences by translating the essence of their most personal and fanciful of dreams. With Sleeping Beauty, we can prepare to feel the rapture of his work once more.

Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty is at Sadler's Wells Theatre until 26 January 2013.

Caveat reader.  Your dear Culture Editor has a confession to make.  Today’s post, on The Perfect Place to Grow, an exhibition currently on display at the Royal College of Art, celebrates the work of some of the venerable old institution’s most famous alumni.  Up front (like many of you also), I fall into that category.  The fact that I make this disclaimer at the very beginning is nothing but due diligence for the ethic of transparency and good practice that was instilled into me whilst there.

On the first day at the Royal College of Art, every year, all new students are given an introductory lecture by the Rector, who explains that the college’s reputation has been built by its location (in South Kensington, contributing to the area being London’s most established cultural quarter) and its former students.  The list is impressive: Henry Moore, Bridget Riley, Lucien Freud, Peter Blake, David Hockney, Frank Auerbach, Ridley Scott, James Dyson, Tracey Emin, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Gavin Turk, Phillip Treacy, Zandra Rhodes, Ron Arad, Orla Kiely, Ian Dury, suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst and Christopher Bailey, to only name a few.

This exhibition successfully manages to convey a number of messages.  First, that the college has contributed significantly to the cultural design of the country.  It was RCA staff that helped to design the road signs that you see every day.  As it was who designed this year’s Olympic torch, uniforms and winner’s podiums, as well as the London Underground logo and typeface.  Second, that it, as a place, is inspiring and nurturing and dedicated to the welfare (cultural and otherwise of its students).  Of course it’s an opportunity for the RCA to blow its own trumpet (and the title is a bit twee, but it’s been lifted from a Tracey Emin artwork), but this exhibition has been held to celebrate its 175^th birthday.  That’s a hell of a long time, and this display demonstrates just how relevant it remains.

The Perfect Place to Grow is at the Royal College of Art until 03 January.