Ballet Jorgen show stellar Canadian dancers offer daring mix

If you didn’t know better, you might think Ballet Jorgen Canada, the Toronto-based company, sneaked in and out of town last weekend on a secret mission. Only a few hundred people at the Maine Center for the Arts attended the troupe’s stellar dance program on Friday, and that’s a pity. The performance was one of the best of the season.

It could be that Ballet Jorgen suffers from the name-recognition game or that it lost ticket buyers by not offering a well-known classical ballet, such as its acclaimed “Romeo and Juliet” or its children’s ballet, “The Velveteen Rabbit.” In 2002, Ballet Jorgen presented an audacious “Coppelia” that drew a solid crowd.

Ballet Jorgen did something far more daring, however, by offering a mixed program of works by various Canadian choreographers as well as a preview from an evolving interpretation of the Russian ballet “Petrushka” by Stravinsky.

Since its founding in 1987, the young Ballet Jorgen has embraced innovation, originality and accessibility as its primary goals. Friday’s performance upheld that mission with works that showed off a smart and sassy dance vocabulary. While the overall technique of the corps de ballet is strikingly fine-tuned, the dancers still capture an element of surprise in each meticulous move. It is as if every tip of the head or roll of the toe is discovered and celebrated in the very moment it takes place.

A combination of classical and modern ballet styles underscored the delicacy of “3 Dimensions,” an abstract work by Chinese-Canadian choreographer Wen Wei Wang set to Felix Mendelssohn’s String

Quartet No. 2 in A Minor. Five dancers worked in tiny gestures and grand movements to reveal relationships between bodies and lines. They were, indeed, like a string ensemble blending and bouncing through melody and variation.

Aya Belsheim, a supple and spunky dancer, pushed Irish step dancing through a postmodern prism of comedy and desperation in “Two Dances for Jane” by Crystal Pite, one of Canada’s master choreographers. In every way possible – flirtation, obstruction, annoyance and spectacle – she fruitlessly tried to attract the attention of Preston McBain as he vacantly strolled across stage to fiddle music by Cape Breton’s Ashley MacIssac.

“The Beatles Go Baroque,” a series of dances to a harpsichord-heavy version of music by the Fab Four; “Decorum,” a pas de deux of longing and desire; and selections from “Petrushka” were respectively fun, intriguing and dynamic – if not a bit overly literal at times.

By the end of the program, any number of images may have passed through the thoughts of audience members: Charlie Chaplin, Michael Jackson, Gene Kelly, Matisse, origami, sea anemones, Egyptian art, Alfred Hitchcock and M.C. Escher. It’s a crazy mix, but if ballet had originated on Friday night, rather than centuries ago in Italy, France and Russia, this is exactly what it would look like.