Unfazed by yet another forced cancellation, the Royal Ballet has notched up a small triumph over the virus. When what was to have been a performance to a live audience in the Opera House fell prey to new restrictions, it went ahead anyway.

It was a night of multiple firsts: the first live performance at Sadler's Wells in seven months (the place hasn’t been dark for so long since the War); the official first day of Carlos Acosta’s tenure as the new director of Birmingham Royal Ballet; and the premiere of his first company commission – an ambitious piece involving live orchestra, 12 dancers and a sorcerer’s handbook

"Don’t hold back,” a front-of-house manager told us. “If you want to show your appreciation, go for it.” This was nothing to do with providing sound effects for the imminent streaming to tens of thousands around the world. It was about letting the performers know there was a real, live audience in the House.

It must be tough being Michael Clark, subject of one the largest retrospectives ever dedicated to a choreographer still living. Post-punk’s poster boy is that curious thing, a creative figurehead who defined a very particular anti-establishment strand in Britain’s recent history but who is virtually unknown to today’s under-40s. Michael who? was the common reponse to my own admittedly fairly narrow survey.

So the Royal Ballet is to make a live comeback, for one night only, on 9 October. Fielding the entire company of 100 dancers, suitably distanced, the enterprise is being hailed as a triumph of logistics. And so it is. But the fact remains that the vast majority of its audience will be watching on a computer screen at home. And the gala programme will be pulled from the company’s back catalogue, health precautions having apparently ruled out the possibility of making anything new since March.

There’s sun and sand, and both are golden – but this is no holiday beach. Distantly, out of focus, you can make out a man with a donkey and cart. Off-camera, some locals kick a ball. A square of sand about the size of a tennis court has been carefully raked in preparation for a performance – a unique performance, as it turns out.

The latest Sadler’s Wells digital offering is 2019’s The Thread, a luminous collaboration between choreographer Russell Maliphant and Oscar-winning composer Vangelis (Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner) for the Athens-based production company Lavris.

It starts with an almighty boom. Without warning, a breeze-block wall that spans the width of the stage collapses into billowing clouds of dust. As the air clears, we see a stage strewn with rubble, and picking her way determinedly through it blonde Julie Shanahan, shod – as are all Pina Bausch's women – in high heels, absurdly impractical for walking, for dancing, or even for standing still.

The latest in Sadler’s Wells’ Digital Stage programme – an impressively assembled online offering to keep audiences entertained during the shutdown – is balletLORENT’s family-friendly dance-theatre production Rumpelstiltskin. It was streamed as a "matinee" on Friday afternoon, and is available to watch for free on 

Hard as it is to imagine the British dance landscape without Richard Alston, we’re going to have to get used to it. The touring company that for the past 25 years has been the chief purveyor of his uniquely lyrical brand of contemporary dance has disbanded, and not because the 71-year-old wanted to call it a day. Far from it.