What a night. Two world premieres on the same bill and both of them dynamite. Thanks to Wayne McGregor and Christopher Wheeldon, the Royal Ballet has a pair of new ballets that shake the Opera House to its rafters. If you don’t rush to see them (or, indeed, Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, also on this triple bill), it’s your loss.

McGregor’s Chroma is ravishing on all fronts, choreography, music and design. The latter is what hits you first, an enormous light box brilliantly designed by John Pawson. Stark and white, it’s a breathtaking void out of which dancers mysteriously emerge, while Lucy Carter’s lighting plays scintillating games with the wondrous sense of space.

The effect is equally striking in Joby Talbot’s gorgeous score, which comprises his compositions along with his orchestral re-imaginings of three tracks by the White Stripes. The stridency of the latter is contrasted by the lush chill-out melodies of Talbot’s own music, played vibrantly by the ROH Orchestra under Richard Bernas.

McGregor’s driving, volatile choreography is so hyper-limber that it almost seems to occur at the cellular level. Every part of the body is disrupted with a scientific thoroughness, yet the mood shifts with the music, tough and ferocious one minute, tender and voluptuous the next. All the while an emotional current beats within the fevered muscles. Chroma may transport its ten dancers to an alien landscape, but it allows them to retain their human vulnerability when they get there. Among the cast, Alina Cojocaru and Federico Bonelli are transformed; Edward Watson astounds.

Wheeldon’s DGV (Danse à grande vitesse) is even more specifically a journey, although perhaps it’s the aftermath of a catastrophic one. Jean-Marc Puissant’s set, with its heap of mangled steel, hints at a plane or train crash. The latter is suggested by Michael Nyman’s propulsive score MGV, commissioned to mark the opening of a new TGV rail service in France. Dancers (two dozen in all, the women on pointe) come crawling out of the wreck to be carried along on a swirl of beautiful shapes that rise and sink like a swell. The choreography’s swimming arms, slow-motion strokes and watery patterns (not to mention the bathing beauty costumes) at times made me think of Esther Williams and her wet Hollywood spectacles. Despite the sensation that everyone is being pulled in some way, DGV moves with tremendous freedom and there’s so much going on in the background that it’s impossible to take it all in. Darcey Bussell enjoys a compelling duet with Gary Avis that is romantic and apocalyptic, encapsulating the mood of shifting perceptions. At one point, music and dance suddenly stop, and the world stands still. If this is Wheeldon in a different time zone, it’s where the Royal needs to be.

Box office: 020-7304 4000