AN evening at the ballet doesn’t often get me musing on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

However, Birmingham Royal Ballet, keen to be modern innovators of high art classicism, are doing just that with a trio of works with the (electric) shock factor.

Powder, set to Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major, is a stunning piece of music, beautifully performed by members of the Royal Ballet Sinfonia under conductor Paul Murphy.

I almost need subtitles for ballet and this lacked narrative, although the muses were apparently involved.

Coming in last was The Centre and Its Opposite.

Created by Garry Stewart, world renowned (non-ballet) choreographer, it was all about power relations. The main one would, I assume, be between ballet itself and what was being done to it.

I found the “rhythmically powerful electric soundscape”

too much to bear. Think industrial hard core from the late nineties. Shudder.

However, E=mc2, a work which premiered this autumn is atomic brilliance in motion.

Matthew Hindson’s music is alchemy in itself, with weird, beautiful percussion.

The company dance the equation’s elements: energy, mass and the speed of light (squared visually for those of us without much maths!).

Samara Downs, in traditional Japanese dress, danced a solo of the tragedy wrought by Einstein’s discovery.

The dancers of these three works, including principals Nao Sakuma and Ambra Vallo and First Artist (and chief hunk) Steven Monteith, work together in these pieces in an egalitarian style unlike traditional ballet.

I promise that your understanding of quantum physics will never be the same again.

Sarah Scott