Robert Binet asks all the questions a sensitive, millennial Canadian would ask of the crusty old idiom he adores: What about those gender roles? Why keep performers and audience apart? What good is ballet anyway in the face of climate catastrophe? The difference is that the prolific resident choreographer of the National Ballet of Canada is not just earnest and righteous, he also makes visionary art. Like Merce Cunningham, he understands pauses and empty space as possessing their own kind of music and force. Drama pervades these openings in Binet’s ballets, so the plotless choreography takes on a rare charge. Dark with Excessive Bright, part of the Royal Ballet’s Festival of New Choreography, is about just such “invisible forces,” the advance notice explains. The Royal Ballet cast, wearing Thomas Tait’s filmy couture, is already moving when the audience streams into the seatless theater where Missy Mazzoli’s oceanic music churns. And the dancers will still be moving 45 minutes later, when we leave. —Apollinaire Scherr