Queensland dancers bring brawn to Orono> Ballet company gives audience a good time

It’s hard to know what to think when a ballet company calls itself a nation’s “longest established professional dance company” after only 36 years of being in business. That’s not an overly impressive number of years for an organization. But The Queensland Ballet, which performed last night at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono, has a quick, acrobatic brawniness that is sure to make its native Australia proud. It may not have the sophistication of some older companies, but it’s got spunk, and that goes a long way in providing a good time.

The evening’s program included two mammoth pieces: “Scheherazade,” with music by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with music by Felix Mendelssohn. It’s likely that the opening scene surprised — if not shocked — a few people. Principal dancer Dione Ware, as the title character, appeared in a see-through leotard. Her sensual moves set the mood for the primal energy of the four-part ballet based on stories from “The Thousand and One Nights.”

Jacqui Carroll’s choreography had a raw passion to its contortionist style. The dancers feverishly banged their feet, slapped their hands and slid long distances on the stage floor. The women did gypsylike belly dances, and the men writhed at their feet. In sharp, jerky movements, the dancers expressed the primitive over the classical, the angular over the graceful.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with choreography by the company’s artistic director, Harold Collins, was the stronger of the two pieces on the program. A mix of Shakespearean fantasy and modern sit-com, the zany ballet had audience members laughing out loud. Unlike the previous piece, “Dream” had outstanding choreographic feats — particularly the effortless splits and twirls of the airborne Shane Weatherby. The addition of ballet-style slapstick placed the story’s two young couples in a comedy of errors.

The Queensland Ballet may not be one of the most seasoned or impressive of companies to pass through town, but it offered a jouncy eruption of physical power that speaks well for its mission in the dance world Down Under.