Portland ballet performances pleasing despite weaknesses

Can-can kickers and leaping lakeside critters came to life in Portland this weekend as American Ballet East and Portland Ballet Company presented their spring concerts in honor of National Dance Week. Though distinctly different in strengths and styles, both shows featured talented dancers and the excitement of live orchestral accompaniment, but also offered the assurance that Bangor’s dancers compare favorably with those of these two other regional companies.

With a particularly young corps de ballet, the ABE concert resembled an end-of-the-year school recital rather than a professional presentation. This is not to diminish the skill of artistic director Linda MacArthur Miele, whose choreography is clean and elegant in a tightly neoclassic style. However, Miele’s company was overall deficient in stage presence and passion.

Principal dancers Frederick Bernier and Sara Whale-Martin and the spritely ballet student Janet Miele were nevertheless energetic and winning performers. Marked by princely charm and adept control, Bernier danced with ease, poise and strength. As choreographer for a group modern piece titled “Chance,” Whale-Martin showed the physicality and demands of dance as she wrapped her body around Bernier’s or held his hand as she swung high into the air with her knees bent and bare feet flexed.

Of particular choreographic merit was a final section of all female dancers who gracefully managed contorted movements. Unfortunately, the young dancers didn’t offer much in the way of dramatic depth, and too often wore blank expressions or plastic smiles.

In several numbers, the young Miele offered the kind of onstage flair and confidence that this company otherwise lacked. What she lacked in fluidity, she made up for in energy and chutzpah, making a noteworthy contribution to the concert.

The highlight of ABE’s performance was the full-company comedy “Can Can Parisian,” an uproarious brawl of flirtations and jealousies among rival lovers in a Paris cabaret. Acrobatics by Dyana Davis and a clownish vaudevillian shtick by actor Jonathan Miele added hilarity to an otherwise lightly amusing but often hokey ballet.

Artistic director Miele is at her best with straightforward and simply lovely Balanchine-type pieces, such as “Britten,” which brought the afternoon to a purely beautiful close.

Surrounded by social glitz and glamor, PBC celebrated dance, literacy and foster family support at a gala Saturday night. Portland-born soap star Victoria Rowell signed autographs in the lobby of Portland City Hall Auditorium, and actor Tony Randall narrated a colorful, high-spirited and terrifically fun rendition of Prokofiev’s fairy-tale score “Peter and the Wolf.” Resident choreographer and dancer Anthony DiGiambattista presented an endearingly mischievous and precocious Peter with a peppy group of animal friends.

Although “Peter” was the popular favorite of the night, the most memorable performance was the modern pas de deux “La Tristesse d’Automne,” danced by Karen Hurll-Montanaro and Scott Potter (who also choreographed the piece). When Potter lifted Hurll-Montanaro into the air upside down and lowered her with caring precision, or navigated her slight body into sharp angles, the effect was truly stunning. The sensuality and articulation of these dancers stole the show. In other numbers during the evening, Hurll-Montanaro’s electrifying movements garnered attention, too.

The ensemble numbers, “Quintette” and “Jubilate,” showed the limitations of the PBC dancers who didn’t move in unison well and seemed to be rushing through eleborate gestures to keep up with the music. PBC deserves applause for designing numbers that are full of risks and high-speed formations, but the faulty synchronization was instantly noticeable.

Whether recital-like or sensational, however, the obvious similarity between the two companies is true in Bangor, too: There are comparatively few professional male dancers or students in our region. This is an imbalance worth addressing in a state that would surely benefit from more artistic diversity.