The Barbican’s New Crowned Hope is a festival inspired by Mozart but not devoted solely to his work. So lovers of the composer should be thrilled that it opens with a wonderful display of the humanity and passion of Mozart’s music, movingly revealed in dance.

Mozart Dances is a trilogy choreographed for his own company by the American Mark Morris to a trio of Mozart piano works, here performed by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Jane Glover, and the pianist Emanuel Ax. The look is immaculate, from the black and white costumes to the exhilarating, virile brushstrokes of Howard Hodgkin’s astounding painted backdrops. In conjunction with the sumptuous music-making and the sublime choreography, it’s an enchantment for the senses. The three dances are meant to be seen together, in order, their differing gender politics gradually developing into an ecstatic unity of purpose. Morris’s writing is the unabashed product of his love affair with Mozart. Very quickly we see how the phrasing of the dance lifts with the music’s exultation and carries with it the same delicious sense of expectation. And just like the music, the dance is structured with a remarkably deft touch.

The first piece, Eleven, set to the Eleventh Piano Concerto, is for the women. This is where the movement motifs and signature phrases are introduced, although at this stage we don’t know that they are going to reappear in each piece. The choreography is decorous and stately, formal yet flowing with a freedom that allows even a simple change of weight to take on an aura of loveliness. Teasingly, Morris gives us men and then dispenses with them as if to affirm that these eight women are so beautiful and strong that they can do this on their own. It’s their quiet, almost austere, resilience that gives Eleven such resonance. With the lively exception of Lauren Grant’s spitfire mortal, they are almost as unreachable as goddesses.

Double (with Yoko Nozaki joining Ax for the Sonata for two pianos) does for men what Eleven did for women. It’s a community of males daring to be themselves: tender and vulnerable, smart and sweetly funny. The central section is a glowing circle dance and nothing could bring these men together more simply or more eloquently. In the final piece, Twenty-seven, 16 men and women – all in white – pool their respective magic to create a work of subtle intelligence and soaring musicality. The witty, elegant choreography is devised in male-female couplings that are completely romantic yet totally unfussy. The lifts are a startling, pleasurable experience, like an unexpected and welcome kiss. By the end, with men on one side of the stage acknowledging women on the other, it’s as if everything that can be said about love has finally been said.

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