As a contemporary dance fan, there are certain expectations when you head along to the world premiere of a brand-new piece. Chances are it will feature a small cast, minimal costumes, no set, lovely lighting and a score defined by its emotional ambivalence: electro pips or, if you’re lucky, perhaps a flourish of tasteful strings.

It is a breath of fresh air then to witness the world premiere of Dickson Mbi’s wildly immersive and huge-in-scale Twice-Born, a piece that breathes life into collective unconscious ideas of society, spirituality, care and ritual. London-born Mbi has a background in street and hip-hop dance, and recently won this year’s Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement In Dance. Twice-Born was created as part of Scottish Ballet’s Next Generation campaign, supporting early to-mid-career choreographers, and it’s thrilling to see the freedom that has been given to Mbi’s ambitious vision. There are no boundaries here, either in imagination or in staging.

The piece takes place loosely over three acts, each rooted in a society with a woman at its head. Scottish Ballet principal Marge Hendrick begins crouched and clutching the side of an enormous mountain that forms the backdrop. Slowly she stretches up, summoning or honouring some higher force; huge rocks rise magically like black clouds into the air. When she is joined onstage by her tribe, they claw and prowl their way into circles and straight formations. Clad in Debbie Duru’s warrior-like costumes (arm cuffs and cross-strapped vests), they move with unified chest pulses, or flicker their fingers in little detailed gestures. Even if we can’t interpret these symbols, we have the sense their movements mean something to them. Hendrick commands her troupe with gravitas, but we can also feel the cost to her. At one point she is left alone on stage, screaming into the void.

Eventually one society falls and another rises from its ashes, but this time its masked matriarch is all alien liquidity and cunning head flicks. She oversees a chilling parade of men, covering their faces with giant rocks and yanking around women like dolls. But it’s the sacrifice and resurrection of dancer Rishan Benjamin, propelling us into the third act, that heralds Twice-Born as something extraordinary.

There are echoes of The Rite Of Spring in the terror and panic of Benjamin as she tries to escape her fate. Unlike Stravinsky’s unforgiving vision, which ends with the death of its protagonist, here, once Benjamin has been laid out in a loving funeral tableau, she takes a single, magical breath. Her body almost bends in two with the force of it, and it creates a moment of pure theatrical catharsis. Benjamin is a powerhouse performer and she carries the final act brilliantly, leading her community into snaking patterns and earth-shaking triumphant drills.

Mbi has created an exhilarating, epic piece which leaves you feeling that you could be watching the work of another Pina Bausch or Akram Khan or Matthew Bourne, or any of the modern choreographers who have turned contemporary dance into a superstar medium, knitting together artistic rigour with accessibility and broad appeal. It’s to Scottish Ballet’s credit that they have enabled the full breadth of his vision to come alive, complete with tumbling meteors, flying dancers and a magnificent filmic score which Mbi himself composed.

As a brisk, exquisite aperitif, Cayetano Soto’s playful 15-minute ode to equestrian delights, Schachmatt, opens the show. Soto is a very different choreographer to Mbi, irreverent and poised, carefully teasing his dancers into chorus lines and coquettish duets on a crisply drawn, giant chess board (the title translates as ‘checkmate’). Soto himself designed the costumes: khaki playsuits and ties, knee-high socks and dressage hats that flirt with fetish.

The Fosse-like sharp edges of his choreography are pleasingly jarring when recontextualised against the torch-song soundtrack for sweeping Spanish and Cuban boleros. Several of the tracks Soto has chosen for his score have been featured in Pedro Almodóvar films, and the piece has crossover with the Spanish director’s vision: sexy, surreal, striking, dancing an almost impenetrable line between humour and seriousness. It’s an evening that leans into the rewards of allowing pure creativity free rein, whatever form that might take.

Scottish Ballet: Twice-Born, His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen, Friday 6 October; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Friday 20 & Saturday 21 October; reviewed at Theatre Royal, Glasgow.