DANCE REVIEW : Joffrey Dancers Join Ballet Pacifica for the First Program of 1989

Huddled against the chill night air, Saturday’s Irvine Bowl audience seemed warmly appreciative of Ballet Pacifica’s first concert of the season. Except for isolated moments of dancing by Joffrey Ballet guests Tina LeBlanc and Edward Stierle, however, the Laguna Beach program exuded the earnest tediousness of a ballet school recital.

Although the Laguna Beach company has clearly made progress in the last year, major difficulties remain in the areas of expressive phrasing, partnering and the articulation of the legs and feet. But the choreography was also mired in clumsiness and banality.

Despite its title, “Solitude,” a premiere by Israel (El) Gabriel, teems with crudely engineered attempts at togetherness. In the first section, set to smoky guitar music by Paco de Lucia, Kristi Moorhead and Kevin Lancer jerkily lower themselves into an ungainly horizontal clinch and three women whirl about with a vague, unfocused energy.

The second section--in which the music abruptly shifts to the Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5--involves ponderously symmetrical poses and confused, hopelessly awkward tableaux bristling with arms, legs and bent torsos.

Act III from “Sleeping Beauty,” adapted and simplified by company founder Lila Zali, became a kind of glorified costume party, with incidental bits of dancing. LeBlanc offered the promising outlines of a radiant young woman in love, and she and Stierle projected warmth and involvement as a couple.

Sketchiness and lack of technical and dramatic ability bedeviled the other variations. Lancer as the Bluebird tried to grin his way through the beats his legs could not manage. Puss in Boots (Paula Hoffner) offered only a stiff, curiously aggrieved version of her playful feline character. With more pantomime than dancing in their roles, Sara Shisler and Anthony Jerkunica as Red Riding-Hood and the Wolf at least dared to attempt the spirit of make-believe.

In Kathy Kahn’s mindlessly prancing “A Careless Ease” (to Claude Bolling’s “Concerto for Flute, Jazz Piano and String Bass”), the women of the company displayed increased lightness and speed, as well as a more polished sense of audience projection. The next step is to learn how to let go, to make the movement look careless rather than fussy and anxious.

Stierle seemed most at home in the pas de deux from “Don Quixote”--not surprising, since that’s the piece that won him a gold medal at the International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Miss., three years ago. Despite a slight stumble, he whipped out the bravura turns and jumps with style and assurance.

LeBlanc, who also wobbled a couple of times, came across as a pert but low-fire partner whose flirting was still too demure and private to play to the gallery.