O.C. DANCE REVIEW : The Coast Ballet at Curtis Theatre

For the past three years, the fledgling Coast Ballet Theatre has been gathering strength and experience at its San Juan Capistrano studios and several Orange County performance sites.

Formed in late 1987 out of a merger of three local companies (two of which dated back to 1981), CBT has undergone several name changes in the interim. But its repertoire remains dominated by Sarma Rosenberg, the company’s co-artistic director, with her husband, Larry Rosenberg.

In a program over the weekend at the Curtis Theatre here, four of the five works were choreographed by Sarma Rosenberg.

She made speedy, if not hectic, energetic and challenging demands on the dancers, and they responded to the running jumps, frequent turns and overhead lifts with clean lines and security.

Interestingly, in an age in which many choreographers are concerned with abstract movement pieces, Rosenberg appears to favor works of moral persuasion. At least, the Friday program opened and closed with such pieces.

Apart from the tempo of its telling, Rosenberg’s “Beauty and the Beast,” set to Peter Warlock’s “Capriol Suite” and Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, is an old-fashioned story ballet that uses mime.

It even has a moral: “Love evokes either the man from the beast or the beast from the man.”

Rosenberg tells the story swiftly, deftly, with imagination, but with only sketchy characterization. She calls to mind parallels with the “Cinderella” fairy tale but never establishes the two other sisters (Jennifer Freedman and Betsy Schamet) as wicked characters.

As Beauty, the fine-featured Sara Lane proved poised and secure in the technical demands but projected little emotional involvement in the drama.

With his matted hair and blackened cheeks, the virtuosic Gary Franco resembled less a scary beast than the moodily handsome magician David Copperfield, so Beauty’s fainting upon seeing him seemed a bit inexplicable.

Two serious choreographic miscalculations: Despite some bravura steps by Franco, the central pas de deux remained thin and disappointing. Second, at the end, Beauty and Beast merely walk forward (a la Fokine’s “Firebird”). Before that, a gymnastic but emotionally flat pas de deux is given to the animated statues of Venus (Stephanie Balmer) and Cupid (Tyrone Baker). It’s not enough.

“Dana’s Ocean: Two Years Before the Mast” (set to Bliss’ ballet score “Adam Zero”) pits good against evil in emblematic, non-narrative fashion, with an earnest Richard Henry Dana (John Denniston) aligned with natural forces such as Oceana (Kaylee Orrell) against the villainous Capt. Thompson (Franco).

Despite some striking visual elements (Dana perched on the ship’s rigging), the work rushes through its elements, verges on Hollywood kitsch and bears little logical scrutiny about what exactly is happening. The piece doesn’t support the noble program note about protesting “our current inhumanities and our mistreatment of our oceans.”

Completing the program were Rosenberg’s “Waltz in Ragtime” (Joplin), a plotless company divertissement; her facile “Ballerina Girl” (Lionel Richie), danced by a lithe Lane and a supportive Denniston; and Inese Birzniece’s circusy showpiece “Valsis” (Tangejena Igenberga), danced with stylish vigor and commitment by Balmer and Bret Rijke.