Turning Pointe : Dance: Black Mountain Dance Theatre, a showcase for student talent, takes a step toward greater recognition this weekend with its performances in the new Poway arts center.

The Black Mountain Dance Foundation has been presenting students in concert for eight years, often with imported guests in starring roles and always at a high school.

So this weekend’s performances at the new Poway Center for the Performing Arts is a step toward larger recognition, with all the trappings of a major local dance event.

The Poway-based organization, recently dubbed Black Mountain Dance Theatre, will still feature professional dancers, including Pacific Northwest Ballet principals Deborah Hadley and Benjamin Houk. But, to complement them, choreographer Thomas Hargrove of Chico State University has been awarded a $35,000 school grant to design an evening of new dances for Black Mountain’s young legs.

To flesh out the program, there will be excerpts from a popular Balanchine ballet (“Chaconne”), the classic “Les Sylphides” (staged by Hargrove after the Mikhail Fokine original) and a piece by San Diego-based Mieczyslaw Morawski, whose classic training harks back to the famed Kirov.

Hargrove has been working with the troupe since February to create the balletic potpourri for this program.

“I included ‘Les Sylphides’ because it’s a white (classic) ballet--a perfect opener for the program, and it can be a signature piece for the company,” Hargrove said. “It’s also a test of their classic technique and romantic delivery. All the ballets are (performed) on pointe, but ‘Catching the Rain’ is very contemporary.”

Expect Hadley and Houk to dish out the best dancing of the evening, even though they are jetting in from Seattle just before the performance. The pair will perform two pas de deux from “Chaconne,” a piece borrowed from the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s eclectic repertory.

Hadley, a San Diego native, made a guest appearance with Stage Seven Dance Theatre about three years ago, with Houk as her partner. But the San Diego Ballet-trained dancer has not been seen on a local stage since.

“I’m so glad to have a chance to get back to San Diego,” she said from Seattle. “I especially enjoy working with regional companies, because it’s nice to see kids performing without professional pressure. They just dance for the enjoyment of dancing.”

Hadley herself has thrived for years in the competition of professional dance. She is the senior ballerina at the Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Ballet, one of the most successful troupes on the West Coast.

“We performed at Kennedy Center recently, and we have about a 38- to 44-week season here, plus touring. We’re No. 1 in earned income (of any ballet company), with about 75% of our budget coming from earned income. We have to struggle to find more dates in Seattle” to satisfy the demand for tickets.

Hadley had hoped to spend more time in San Diego during this visit, but a busy rehearsal schedule with her company will preclude anything more than a whistle-stop.

“I thought I could do some master classes,” she said. “But it turns out that our company will be performing in July, although we were supposed to have a layoff then. So the only time we’ll have is the weekend.”

Although Hadley and her partner will dance only the two duets from “Chaconne,” they will have ample opportunity to show off both their allegro and adagio technique in these virtuoso sections.

“They’re very different; one is slow and lyrical and the other is very fast,” Hadley said.

For the supporting cast, Hargrove has tailored his choreography to the strengths of the dancers. Because the bulk of Black Mountain’s performers are tyros, Hargrove eschewed highly technical moves and dramatic themes from his tradition-based dance vocabulary for this program.

“Of course, I made adjustments to make them look good,” he acknowledged, “but they’re very well trained, which is one of the reasons I chose to come here to work. Although this is a very young group, they’re very courageous, and they have grown a lot in the process.”

Though Hargrove spends most of his time working with the home-grown youngsters, he has set one piece (“Untitled Night”) on imported dancer Michael King, a five-year veteran with the Indianapolis Theatre Ballet troupe. King will team up with Black Mountain principal Vureyka Gork-Catanzaro for this duet.

Founding director Sylvia Palmer Zetler calls this weekend’s concert a major turning point.

“We’ve been putting on concerts for years, and for the past three years we’ve been performing as a real company,” she said. “Just this year, we started applying for funding and (assembling) a professional board. But this is the first time we’ve ever performed anywhere but in the high school. And it’s the first time we’ll get a chance to be seen by most of the community.”

The performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday.