When Mark Morris first came to the Dance Umbrella festival in the early 1980s, no one could have imagined what a towering talent he would become. But seeing his company now, as the starring attraction of this year’s festival, is to be reminded of how smart, uplifting and exquisite his dances are. When you have lost your faith in the power of pure dance to touch the heart and feed the head, this is where you come to have faith restored.

Empire Garden, which opens the first of two Sadler’s Wells programmes, is new this year — and how extraordinary it is to see Morris overturning all our expectations of what his dance language is meant to be. The score is by Charles Ives, a trio for violin, cello and piano, that doesn’t immediately spring to mind as the most perfect for dance (no matter how gorgeously played, as here). Yet Morris, with a brain steeped in the love and understanding of his composers, clarifies the music through his choreography.

Elizabeth Kurtzman’s dazzling costumes, an array of bright colours and American cultural references, work a kind of magic spell on the dance, bringing the ingenuity and complex patterning of the choreography into even greater perspective. The independent spirit and individual strength of each dancer is always foremost in Morris’s mind, but with Empire Garden they are given free rein. It’s as if each of the 15 dancers has been allowed to pursue his or her own dialogue with the music. The flavour and formations of the physical vocabulary are sharper than we are used to seeing from Morris, yet taken as a whole they are superbly cohesive. He has them popping like popcorn, buzzing like bumblebees, walking majestically like victorious warriors, or gently swaying in beautiful shock waves of movement.

And that’s just for starters. Bedtime, set to songs by Schubert ( movingly sung), is emotionally exhilarating, a lullaby that sprinkles goodness and grief over the stage in limpid, touching phrases. Even the shape of the 12-strong ensemble suggests a heart bursting with feeling and yearning for peace, for harmony, for sleep.

And who could argue with a bill that ends with V? This 2001 work is imagined as two tribes of dancers (one in blue, the other green) who skate around each other in fleet and frolicsome phrases. The seven couples float on the breeze of Schumann’s melodies (played with loving care by the outstanding MMDG Music Ensemble) and crawl along the stage as if reverting to a primeval physical self. As elsewhere, there are no sets because none is needed. This is dance that totally — gloriously — speaks for itself.

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