How appropriate it is that Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring should be performed by a company called Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre. Many may regard the ballet with awe nowadays, but it was famously called a beast at its Parisian premiere in 1913: Stravin-sky’s spiky orchestrations and Nijinsky’s jerky choreography were altogether too much for the posh premiere audience: “Fetch a doctor,” one man is reputed to have cried. “Fetch a dentist,” shouted another. Perhaps they expected a new Nutcracker.

A hundred years on, Stravinsky’s score still sounds innovative, but it’s far from shocking to 21st-century ears, especially when it’s as solidly played as it is here – the music is on tape, but rather disgracefully neither conductor nor orchestra are credited in the programme. Fabulous Beast director and choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan has attempted to introduce a shock factor by having his male dancers strip full frontal naked, then don print frocks. Perhaps there’s mild titillation to be had in knowing that the men have nothing on underneath as the frocks swirl round their gyrating bodies, but it’s hardly shocking.

Where Keegan-Dolan scores, however, is in matching his choreography to Stravinsky’s score. The movements have been mapped out to the tip of each finger and toe, and faithfully follow every quicksilver change in the music. A theme of hunters (the men wearing snarling dog headpieces) pursuing the hunted (the women dressed as hares) is presented, with the 17-strong dance company realising Keegan-Dolan’s vision with breathtaking precision, making you listen to the music with fresh ears.

Stravinsky’s Petrushka score is full of the colourful atmosphere of a Russian fairground. Yet Keegan-Dolan dumps all the potential visual colour and presents the ballet in white — white backcloth, white costumes. The sole exception is a lady dressed in black who sits in judgement on a sort of super-elevat-ed Wimbledon umpire’s chair, like a puppet mistress controlling events. But beyond that the symbolism escaped me, and I was content to sit back and absorb the music.