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.

The Saatchi Gallery doing what they do be-…well, doing what they do.  A group exhibition celebrating the work of young to mid-career artists from a specific country or a specific movement.  This time, the focus is on Russia (if, of course, the overtly vulgar title didn’t manage to give you any clues).

There are twenty artists on display here, many of whom create truly wonderful work.  Yelena Popova, for example, is one of the UK’s Great White Hopes (Russian born, Popova is a recent graduate from the Royal College of Art and is now based in this country).  Daniel Bragin’s sculptures are fabulously textural, and Sergei Vasiliev’s photographs are visual car crashes, at once frightening and alluring.

There’s nothing per se wrong with this exhibition (far from it, the overall standard of quality is high).  You like the Saatchi Gallery, I like the Saatchi Gallery – we all like the Saatchi Gallery – but surely there has to be more to it than that?  If we go on a Sunday afternoon we can wander along some shops on the King’s Road and then get a cream tea from the gallery’s café.  But Russian art is beginning to see something of a renaissance, and organisations such as Shoreditch’s Calvert 22 are leading the way spreading art and culture the former Soviet bloc.  Safe is a nice concept, but who wants safe?

Gaiety is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union is at the Saatchi Gallery until 05 May.