Moscow
La Fille mal gardée
Yuri Grigorovich is back at the Bolshoi. After leading the theatre as its artistic director for more than 30 years, and producing landmark productions of The Nutcracker and Spartacus, the king of Russian ballet was ousted in 1995. This year, he returns as ballet master/choreographer and on Friday, he helms a new production of La Fille mal gardée. Sir Frederick Ashton’s 1960 version of the ballet is already part of the Bolshoi’s repertoire, but this production reverts to the Alexander Gorsky creation for the Imperial Bolshoi Theatre in 1905. Grigorovich’s rendering of La Fille promises a marriage of the old and new. The theatre calls it “an ideal vehicle” to show off the talents of its young hopefuls; pupils from the Moscow Ballet School will dance among the company, all part of Grigorovich’s remit to bring new blood to the old stalwart. First night performances are on Friday and Saturday.

The giant-domino run

Berlin
Festival of Freedom
In 1989 Berliners watched as the wall that had divided their city for almost 30 years was torn down. To mark the 20th anniversary, the city celebrates again with its “Festival of Freedom” starting this weekend. Many festival-goers were part of the peaceful revolution of 1989, chronicled by an open-air exhibition that has been on show since May in the Alexanderplatz. In spite of attempts to integrate the two sides of the city, Eastern Berlin remains somewhat redolent of its Soviet past. A swathe of new building has grown up alongside the old, though, and Perspectives – 20 Years of a Changing Berlin draws attention to some of the architectural feats that have been achieved in the past two decades, including the Olympic stadium, the East Harbour and the Manhattan-styled KaDeWe area. The festival proper begins on Saturday with the placing of more than 1000 giant dominoes, 2.5m high and decorated by pupils from Berlin’s schools, along a 2km route from the Reichstagsufer, via the Brandenburg Gate to Potsdamer Platz. On Monday, after a concert by the Staatskapelle Berlin at the Pariser Platz, a tumbling of the domino chain will end the festival. The celebration is so grand that it makes one wonder what Berlin can be holding back for the silver anniversary in 2014.

New York
NY Comedy Festival
From Wednesday, a host of American and a smattering of international comedians will occupy some of Manhattan’s glitziest venues for the five-day annual Comedy Festival. For its sixth year the festival has expanded considerably, with more than 150 comedians performing. Ricky Gervais will be looking to increase his American fan base at Carnegie Hall on Thursday, with a sequel to his Out of England show – imaginatively named Out of England II. On Friday, The Howard Stern Show’s Artie Lange is at The Beacon Theatre, Broadway, and the week concludes with politics-buff Bill Maher at the Lincoln Center’s Avery Fischer Hall. Ends November 8.

Marcel Breuer’s ‘African Chair’

New York
Bauhaus 1919–1933
MoMA’s first exhibition of the Bauhaus school for 70 years, subtitled Workshops For Modernity, opens on Sunday. The show is organised in collaboration with a consortium of Bauhaus collections in Germany, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Sitftung Bauhaus Dessau and Klassik Stiftung Weimar (a feat which, the museum points out, would not have been possible before German reunification). It features more than 400 works of art, including paintings, sculpture, ceramics, textiles and furniture. Iconic Bauhaus works such as Marcel Breuer’s “African Chair” and Lothar Schreyer’s design for a coffin will be on show alongside photography by László Moholy-Nagy and Kurt Kranz’s abstract cinema. Until Jan 25.

London
Duke Bluebeard’s Castle/The Rite of Spring
English National Opera mounts a rare double bill of opera and ballet at the Coliseum on Friday. Daniel Kramer, award-winning director of last year’s Punch and Judy at London’s Old Vic, makes his Coliseum debut with Bartók’s one-act opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, starring Michaela Martens and Clive Bayley. Michael Keegan-Dolan’s dance troupe Fabulous Beast will follow with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. For seven nights only, the combination of Bartók’s darkly haunting fairytale with the energy and power of Keegan-Dolan’s 20-man interpretation of the Stravinsky classic ought to make for a stimulating – if not exhausting – experience. Last performance of the double bill is on November 28.

Oxford
Ashmolean Museum
The reopening of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum on Saturday marks the end of a £61m renovation project for Britain’s oldest public museum. By most accounts, the redesign has been extremely successful; apart from the dull but necessary improvements (higher ceilings, better security and so on), the museum’s curators have taken the opportunity to devise a new scheme for displaying the famous collection. Crossing Cultures, Crossing Times aims to focus the visitor on the similarities and cultural exchanges between east and west, an acknowledgment of the globally conscious society in which we live. There are also 35 new galleries, an education centre and Oxford’s first rooftop restaurant to add to the enticements. Reopens on Saturday.