Cirque du Soleil originated the concept of blending athleticism and theatricality, circus skills with music and suggestive staging, and their shows remain the benchmark. So any production with a similar bent needs something unique to make it stand out.

The New York-based performance group AntiGravity has found the right mix of physicality and showmanship that makes it hold its own.

Instead of lofty artiness, AntiGravity, now at the Hawai'i Theatre, creates a jazzy, gritty, street-smart party atmosphere that radiates from the stage, but would be equally at home on the sidewalk outside.

Founded in 1990 by Christopher Harrison, the company is comprised of athletes and dancers with gymnastic skills. (One troupe member is a two-time rhythmic gymnastic champion from Slovakia.) Their sense of having a good time easily spreads to its audience. The company name comes from moments when performers seem to literally hang in the air or float in defiance of all physical laws.

The best example comes in the closing to Act One, set on a pair of trampolines separated by a tall tower. A team of four men leap from the high platform and rebound effortlessly to their starting positions, seeming to walk up the tower's vertical sides and choose their trajectories as playful afterthoughts.

Earlier, a man and a woman perform a remarkable pas de deux, tumbling high above the stage from bungee cords attached to their waists, alternating position and shaping graceful human loops high above the crowd.

A pair of muscled gymnasts do a slow motion balancing act, cantilevering from each other's bodies to hang parallel to the stage floor, supported only by their strength and physical control.

But the show's most distinctive prop is its "anti-gravity boot," a short, spring-loaded stilt that lends its wearer the look of a goat-hoofed satyr and the ability to leap high into the air. This gives the show's finale the air of a classical bacchanal — with the men bounding across the stage and springing into impossibly high somersaults and the women bungee-bouncing seductively to a throbbing musical soundtrack.

Many of the show's numbers add a new twist to familiar circus acts. A pair of artists hang from a small, hollow cube instead of a trapeze. Four monkey-men hang freeze-framed from a large cage-like structure. Three women perform an aerial ballet inside translucent hammocks, emerging from their cocoons into butterfly poses.

And the entire performance is stamped with sexy dance choreography for the company and specialty tap and hip-hop numbers executed by the Lombard Twins, Martin and Facundo, who have their own unique way of defying gravity.

Ultimately, the show earns its name and its double meaning. Not only does it physically float, it does so with great happiness and joy.