‘Giselle’ pleasant> Troupe lacks depth

The very name of the Moscow Festival Ballet has a certain headiness to it. It sounds as if it should go right along with the Bolshoi and the Kirov Ballets.

But in fact, the Moscow Festival Ballet, which performed Friday to a sold-out crowd at the Maine Center for the Arts, proved itself to be more of a new kid on the block than a major figure in the Russian dance scene. Established in 1989 by Sergei Radchenko, a former dancer with Bolshoi, the Moscow Festival Ballet is a young troupe that has spunk and sincerity, but doesn’t have much punch.

In a presentation of “Giselle,” Marina Alexandrova took the title role, which she played with impressive wispyness. She was graceful in an intriguingly floppy, puppetlike way. She and Vitaly Zabelin, who played her lover, Count Albrecht, had the technical ability to carry the roles, but they were the only dancers who had the emotional depth that a ballet such as this both deserves and requires.

Otherwise, the ballet slips into a rather trite performance of mimelike movements. Because the plot lines of ballets such as “Giselle” are so sentimental to begin with, there has to be excellence in the dancing to carry the show. Unfortunately, the Moscow Festival Ballet didn’t have that subtle dramatic sophistication that is so necessary.

Too many small distractions also stole from the focus on the dancing itself. Plastic flowers were unattractive props that, when tossed, as they often were, made annoying clicking sounds on the stage. The dancers overindicated their emotions — grabbing their hearts, peering longingly into the wings, straining their faces to create intensity. Although the dancing was meant to have the grand gestures of stylized ballet, it generally lacked the passion of good drama. Such points may seem picky in part, but they also make it hard to find the characters engaging.

Act II had some exceptionally smooth lifts and focused more on the dancing than Act I. Alexandrova was spritely in her gazelle hops, and the pas de deux with Zabelin were among the best of the show. The set was a shady sylvan scene with dark lighting that accentuated the otherworldliness of love’s transcendence.

It would be fair to say that the Moscow Festival Ballet is an extremely competent troupe that offered a pleasant and neatly artistic presentation of “Giselle.” If you expected something of a more classical depth, then you may have been disappointed. But if you were simply out for a night of springy ballet with youthful dancers, pretty sets and a love story, then the Moscow Festival Ballet left you sated.