In the beginning, synthesized tinklings of a xylophone began in the dark. Flashing white lights outlined silhouetted human figures behind a white scrim. With each flash, the poses — some portentious, some outrageous — changed. Then, the four figures cut through the scrim and emerged with a cloud of smoke from darkness into light.

The music changed from Philip Glass’ spacey new age bells to The Bobs’ a cappella version of “Psycho Killer.” And ISO took flight.

Four figures, moving more like cyborgs than humans, wore flight suits, aviator sun glasses, and expressionless faces. Elastic bands joined the group at the ankles as they skipped, dipped, and waltzed through this wild five-legged adventure with movement, which ended in a pile of bodies on the floor. No one really knows how to classify the performing troupe ISO. Are they dancers? gymnasts? new vaudevillians? comic actors? adults who never got over a love for the contortionist game “Twister”?

Performing at the Maine Center for the Arts Friday night, ISO defined themselves as a group devoted to versatile movement, optical trickery, and a determination not to take itself too seriously .

Creative lighting played an important role in the evening, too. As with “In the Beginning,” “Wooman,” used projected light to create humorous and spooky effects. Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland, founding members of ISO and former dancers with MOMIX, wore skin-tight unitards and white bathing caps as they moved in front of a white scrim and cast shadows onto the back wall. With fascinating facility, the dancers distorted their shadows into cartoonish images of giants and animals. More like a comedy routine than a pas de deux, “Wooman” showed the quick wit and physical agility of Hampton and Roland.

Improvising much of the time, the duo climbed over rows of audience members, played slow-motion tennis with rods and clicking-tongue noises, and warmed their feet by an imaginary fire created by red lights. Most of this schtick was performed without any intelligible sounds, but, every so often, the two would talk in chirpy jibberish.

“I Do” was a raucous modern dance piece in which company members Brian Frette and Morleigh Steinberg displayed a rough-and-tumble relationship. Hands and feet were joined by fluttery swaths of white cloth in “Linguini Arms,” the title of which was the most exciting portion of this specious piece.

Roland, a trained gymnast and diver, transformed into a masked super hero for “Captain Tenacity.” With great confidence and terrific comic posture, she threw herself against a cushiony pad and stuck upside down, side ways, and as if in flight. After the show, during a question-and-answer period with the four artists, Roland wouldn’t reveal the obvious about this routine — that Velcro was the secret ingredient.

The second half of the show included “Helter Skelter,” in which company members thrust their faces and body parts into a stretchy material and made absurd forms to the stacato sounds of The Bobs’ a cappella “Helter Skelter.” Roland and Hampton teamed up again for an energetic pas de deux, “Scare Myself,” in which two lovers rendezvous after dark.

The final ballet piece, “Foreign Tales,” was a surreal ball. The men wore white knee-lemgth shirts over which long, black formal tails hung. The women wore only the hoops to their ball gowns. The hoops folded up and the women, as if on dollies, sailed smoothly across the floor. Later, the men used the hoops as props for a graceful “hoop” dance.