Readers review this week's big TV series

The Royal Ballet is taking a trip to Wonderland for its first brand new full-length work in 20 years. Jessica Duchen looks forward to a curious evening

It was not chivalrous of Alastair Macaulay, the British dance critic of The New York Times, to write that Jenifer Ringer, principal dancer of the New York City Ballet, looked overweight in The Nutcracker. To say that a woman with a history of bulimia and anorexia looked as if she had had "one plum too many" as the Sugar Plum Fairy showed an undeniable emotional insensitivity. The incident coincides with the imminent release of Black Swan, a film about the grotesque physical demands made on dancers, and with a wave of ballet mania. So Macaulay's remark has hit black ice in front of a mass audience. As Natalie Portman, star of Black Swan, asked rhetorically: "In whatever other fields is it acceptable to judge artists by how big they are?"

'I'd like to think of us as the Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney of the ballet world'

Frederick Ashton's 1958 ballet, Ondine, the tale of a water sprite's love for an unfaithful prince, was old-fashioned even when it was new. It has an enchanting ballerina role, created for Margot Fonteyn, but surrounds it with an awful lot of padding. Ashton's watery imagery goes from poetic to kitsch and back again. Lila de Nobili's designs include mistily evocative landscapes, but unflattering wigs and boots.

A classic novel is reduced to meteorology and put to music while a classic ballet loses a rising star

The sensational defection of the Hungarian ballerina Nora Kovach in 1953 caught the imagination of both sides in the Cold War. She was an outstanding talent, decorated and feted by the communist state in Hungary, yet she decided with her then husband and partner, Istvan Rabovsky, to defect to the West. They were the first ballet dancers to escape from the Soviet bloc, and their defection caused enormous ripples that went far beyond ballet circles.

Candace Bushnell, once called 'Jane Austen with a martini', turns a sharp, forensic gaze on New York's super-rich in her new novel

Two surprise moves in the dance world this week. The Bolshoi Ballet's Alexei Ratmansky becomes artist in residence at American Ballet Theatre – which snatched him from under the nose of its rivals, New York City Ballet. Back in Britain, Javier De Frutos has made a speedy exit from Phoenix Dance Theatre.

We take a peek in the little black books of The Independent on Sunday critics

The dramatic ballerina Sallie Wilson was renowned as an interpreter of the British choreographer Antony Tudor's work after he went to the United States in 1940. After retirement she continued faithfully to keep his delicately calibrated psychological ballets alive in the face of later generations of dancers' cooler personalities and emphasis on technique.

During a brief UK visit, the Kirov dazzles with Balanchine's three ballets in one

Lights, action ... cue the music silenced by Stalin: Film noir meets Dostoevsky in a low-key, yet powerfully insinuating new ballet that mimics features of early cinema

Personality is the answer to American wobbles