Humour has never sprung to mind as an ingredient of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring, unless you include the madcap behaviour of the French audience at the premiere in 1913.

The detractors hated the dancing of Serge Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet as much as they loathed Stravinsky’s savage and uncompromising music, which can still pummel you in the solar plexus.

But the refreshing dance version presented here by the Irish company Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre at one point leavens stark scenes of nudity, aggression and sex with an amusing cliché - the smoking of cigarettes after the male performers have had their way with Mother Earth.

At least, the post-coital drags raised a titter in the audience, though the violence of choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan’s overall conception must have left it wondering whether or not it was a good idea. Those who take part in fertility rituals are not in them for the laughs. And there’s nothing amusing about Stravinsky’s score.

Perhaps the choreographer thought such frenetic goings-on deserved a break, if only a few desultory puffs on a fag. The episode was soon forgotten as Stravinsky's narrative, unified by the creative power of Spring, required the dancers to be on their stamping feet again The choreography was frenzied and physical and the later cross-dressing allowable (if puzzling) in terms of the fleeting elemental vision Stravinsky had of a pagan rite. You fill in your own details. The work's binary form - The Adoration of the Earth followed by The Sacrifice - allows a fair degree of imaginative leeway, though Keegan-Dolan appears to abide by the direction in the second part that the consecrated victim should twice be marked by Fate after twice being caught in the circle of old wise men - at least, I think I counted corectly and once assumed the menacing characters in huge mastiff heads had a modicum of wisdom. The apotheosis was thrilling, as the Chosen One sanctified herself in the Holy Dance, the emblem of blood sacrifice.

Petrushka is lighter and more prescribed as a narrative but Keegan-Dolan’s version of the original scenario is much looser and justifiably wittier. The unrestrained movements are a joy, as devoid of pain as The Rite is screaming with it. There's an opportunity in this ballet for some colourful ethnic costumery but Fabulous Beast eschew it, opting instead for a paler imitation of what was going on in The Rite and creating thereby a perpetual motion in white tunics and drapes.

The puppet-character of Petrushka is the Russian equivalent of Punch, Pierrot and Pinnochio, straw-filled characters yearning for a human life. One was never sure in this production that the pathos of such yearning was ever going to show through, which in the end it didn't. Perhaps pathos can't be done in these cynical times without sentimentality. But it didn't stop the company filling the stage with lithe animation and unflagging purpose.

The music, not unexpectedly, was recorded. Nowhere in the programme was the orchestra or conductor mentioned, an omission forgivable if you’re prepared not to acknowledge who sets the pace in works essentially about energised rhythm.