A solitary, suited figure appears on stage, singing a poetic Irish lament. As a prelude to the eerie bassoon notes of the familiar first movement, this serves as a statement of intent for Michael Keegan-Dolan’s reworking of two repertoire classics, The Rite of Spring and Petruskha, with his ensemble Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre.

Being the start of Spring, and with the piece having passed the Centenary mark, it is a great time to see this work. Right away, the swooping, dynamic and urgent score brings out opportunity for inventive and thrilling choreography. As with the original music, in set and costumes, the primal plays off the deliberately modern. Yet things are subverted – the original themes of violent ritual sacrifice and sexual domination remain, only here, gender roles are blurred. At points, the men and women are represented with hounds' and hares' heads respectively, but then, in an audacious scene, the men remove their contemporary, nondescript clothes and don floaty summer dresses. From the opening, where a sinister old woman sits, smoking, things continue in unexpected ways. The woman of the title escapes her sacrificial fate, eventually controlling her assailants, while, the men dethrone the dominant male and then begin humping the earth. According to the director, the clever stage device of packing boxes has something to do with gender ties in Irish society, but it’s all rather confusing, confused and topsy-turvy. Yet the lack of coherence in these oblique and radical representations didn’t spoil what was a stunning display of collective movement, full of percussive stomping, swirling and the contrasts of unison and solo performance. Throughout, stage lighting and effects such as snowfall are used sparingly and beautifully, and the piece ends with a silhouetted pose against an amber sky, reminiscent of Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project at Tate.

The second piece, Petrushka, is the sorbet after an ominous sunset. Mood-wise, it is playful and sparkling, with a minimal, all-white set and costumes. A towering and mysterious puppetmaster resides over the figures, transforming each dancer in turn into a marionette. Here, the director dispenses with the already slight story, to focus entirely on the dancing. It concludes with the original marionette removing her white face, climbing up a ladder into the rafters of the theatre, transcending the control of the puppetmaster and the confines of the stage, up into “the gods”.