‘Swing!’ dancers showcase moves but lack funk

The original Broadway musical “Swing!” – performed Tuesday at the Maine Center for the Arts – gives new meaning to the lyric: “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” Frankly, the show also gives new meaning to the term “musical” because, in fact, it is an episodic revue of 1940s music with dance.

Here’s what “Swing!” doesn’t give new meaning to: the exclamation point. With all its big smiles and high kicks, the plotless show rightfully deserves gleeful punctuation. This is not just dance. It’s dance!

As if anyone could miss the cheery point. The athletic dancers, who neatly moved as an ensemble, appeared to be having so much prepackaged fun onstage that they didn’t settle for just plain toss-her-in-the-air swing. They managed to swing in USO uniforms, in zoot suits, in cowboy boots, in slinky gowns and in maid uniforms.

The set suggested the zigzag designs of old dance-hall stages in the city, including a live (and loud) big band onstage. But the show, with all its careful moves, flinging skirts, cushiony sneakers and happy feet, was more like Disney goes to Harlem. Or better: It was as if the cheerleading squad met the figure skating team and decided to do an aerobic tribute to Lawrence Welk by way of the Apollo Theater.

With all its clean-cut choreography and slicked-back sensationalism, “Swing!” still requires a lot of muscle and motion, and this touring cast rocked for two hours. While the dancers had their zippy leaps and splits and hip thrusts on all the right beats, there was a thudding lack of soul to the production. Or perhaps it’s that ballet is too vanilla a training ground for the cut-loose jive of swing.

The most enticing segments of the night were narrative and humorous duets between singers Ashley Hunt and Chase Steele Greye in “Bli-Blip” and “All of Me.”

In general, however, “Swing!” could stand with a little less exclamation and a whole lot more funk. Not even award-winning director Jerry Zaks, who came in late on the 1999 Broadway production to essentially “doctor the script,” could save this show from being overly cute. Or, in the vernacular of the evening: Cute!