It comes down to this: Études is about how ballet is built and what it looks like; Circle Electric is about what meaning there is in dance and how it makes you feel.

They are two radically different works, one made in 1948 and the other more or less yesterday, put together by The Australian Ballet’s artistic director David Hallberg to illustrate the broad church that is 21st century ballet.

The Australian Ballet’s Circle Electric. Photo © Daniel Boud

As it happens, oppositions are central to the work of Stephanie Lake, TAB’s new resident choreographer, and are woven into the fabric of Circle Electric. As in all her work she focuses on ideas of the individual and the crowd, order versus chaos, acceptance and exclusion, control and co-operation. In other words, her dance is about life.

Circle Electric had its origin last year as a 15-minute chamber work for TAB’s touring program, made for six dancers. The original impulse and lovely fragments of its choreography remain in a piece grown to use the power of 49 dancers (if my counting is correct). Also expanded are the original bracing contributions of Robin Fox...