A Canadian figure skating company is performing in Philly. It’s nothing like the figure skating you see on TV.

Alexandre Hamel was a creative, artistic figure skater, always finding new ways to move on ice —the sort of skater fans love. The judges, however, did not show the same appreciation for Hamel, who placed 20th at the Canadian Figure Skating Championships in 2003 and 24th in 2004.

So at 22, he ended his competitive time and went into another somewhat straightforward skating career, performing with Disney on Ice.

But he found understudying Pinocchio and skating other character roles equally disappointing. . His search for fulfillment on blades eventually led him to start a contemporary ice skating company that now tours the world, showcasing the types of dynamic, creative movements he pursued during his competitive career.

Hamel is the artistic director and one of 15 company skaters in Le Patin Libre — meaning skating free — which is performing Murmuration this weekend at Penn’s Class of 1923 Ice Skating Rink. It is part of Penn Live Arts’ dance series, although Murmuration is not specifically dance.

The 65-minute piece is based on flocking, a concept that is also used in dance.

“When birds fly in groups, they create those amazing shapes; starlings do it the best, but pigeons do it, too. Fish do it, too,” Hamel said. “You need a much greater scale to have the murmuration effect function, and us at the relatively small scale of an ice hockey rink with only 15 skaters … [when] we glide in a fluid way, the murmuration magic works. The units melt into a whole. The brain is confused when looking at it, and from inside, it’s an incredible joy to to be part of that.”

As far as traditional figure skating goes, Hamel said he is one of the few in the company who still likes to do the big jumps. "Murmuration was not a piece that needed much of that or could welcome much of that, but I do a bit of that still in the show. But I’m a speed enthusiast, and I love performing.”

Murmuration is not the sort of figure skating you’d see on TV.

“Some people come with the wrong expectations,” Hamel said, “hoping to see contemporary dance on ice. We don’t look like Merce Cunningham, we don’t look like Pina Bausch, we don’t look like Alvin Ailey. Our style is based in the celebration and an enjoyment of the functionality of ice skating, which is speed, the kind of movements the skating body does when it tries to go fast and to glide. It’s a celebration of being immobile, but going forward or rotating, which is allowed by ice skating in a magical way.”

Le Patin Libre also performs on roller skates when the venue calls for them. But Hamel will point out to arts presenters that their city likely has an ice rink where the company can perform, even in the summer.

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In the early days in 2005, after Hamel spent a year with Disney on Ice, he and a group of other like-minded skaters “wanted to create something different, something free, and something independent from the world of figure skating, its institutions, and its traditions.” So they started performing on frozen ponds in and around Montreal — “mostly in the context of very festive and family friendly and unpretentious winter carnivals.”

Eventually they started getting invited to shows, some in Europe.

By 2010, five skaters decided to work full-time on the project, doing everything on and off the rink.

A big break came in 2013; a residency at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London “helped us define what we were doing,” said Hamel.

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What they wanted to do, it turned out, was to disconnect from the figure skating world and lean in more toward the world of dance and circus. Their home, Montreal, was also home to Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Éloize, and other companies breaking barriers.

Today, the company includes skaters from all over the world — even one from Philly. Isaac Alan Lindy lives in Philadelphia, grew up in Bala Cynwyd, and first put blades to ice at the Penn Rink, where he’ll be performing this weekend. He also teaches figure skating at the Skatium in Havertown.

They, too, wanted to take their medium and find different ways to work on it. “Instead of trying to do pastiche of contemporary dance on ice, we started to explore the glide,” Hamel said. “Then we became significantly modern and an art form of its own, instead of imitating another one and transferring it to the ice. This is when I think we started to claim modernity and postmodernity.”

Also like the circuses in their hometown, they have a pop-up “theater” this winter.

The group is building a seasonal ice rink in Montreal that will be ”perfectly adapted to our shows, [and] will also be a cool hangout place.”

Hamel hopes this becomes an annual thing — building a rink in every city they visit, like the Cirque du Soleil tents.

“Just like the circus moves from a city to another, there’s a bit of that attitude and pleasure in Le Patin Libre. We live like circus artists just a little bit — we travel all the time.”

“Le Patin Libre in Murmuration,” 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. University of Pennsylvania’s Class of 1923 Ice Skating Rink. $46. 215-898-3900 or pennlivearts.org