Credit: BILL COOPER

I almost don't want to say anything about it. David Bintley's new work for Birmingham Royal Ballet has such impact that I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise.

This amazing creation is inspired by the work of — who else? — Albert Einstein. Specifically, it was David Bodanis' book E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation that was the source of Bintley's desire to develop “movement patterns based on gravity, apparent chaos, extremes of speed and slowness”. But these mere words don't do it justice — it is a truly exhilarating achievement, and extremely moving, with the beauty of the dance matched exquisitely to Matthew Hindson's engrossing score.

The ballet indeed shares its name, E=mc2, with that world-famous equation. The cosmic frenzy of the opening movement climaxes and gives way to a serene, confined second, more suggestive of atomic order. The final exuberant section is performed in front of a bank of spotlights, and as the array of dancers spin and tilt like tops, they create a terrific optical effect. It's brilliant and it makes you feel good to be a physicist.

But what's haunting me is the interlude performed by a lone Japanese dancer, emerging from darkness in a white kimono and moving so gently, then suddenly to the accompaniment of a blast of sound that rumbles and crackles and hisses. E=mc2 indeed. But the delicate, wistful dance goes on.

Birmingham Royal Ballet, which is directed by Bintley, offers E=mc2 as part of a treble bill called Quantum Leaps, sandwiched between Stanton Welch's Powder (to Mozart's clarinet concerto) and Garry Stewart's The Centre and its Opposite. This last is set to an electronic soundscape devised by Huey Benjamin, and the contrast from one end of the programme to the other couldn't be greater: Bintley has described Stewart's harsh, contemporary work as “probably the most extreme piece that we have ever done.” I'd aver that E=mc2 is probably one of the best.

Quantum Leaps was performed at Sadler's Wells, London, on 10–11 November 2009.