DANCE REVIEWS : Some Magic From L.A. Classical Ballet in Long Beach

Neither a hall--the Terrace Theater in Long Beach--that yawned with open seats, nor any of the vicissitudes suffered by the Los Angeles Classical Ballet in these post-dance-boom days of an unrecovered economy could dim the magic, Sunday, of Helena Ross’ Juliet (balcony scene).

With Ashley Wheater as her virile Romeo, Ross captured the shining spirit of youthful ardor and swooned with an inner ecstasy that could be seen in her nuanced phrasing, in the meaning she brought to every small yet fluid, integrated detail.

Similar things could be said of Tzer-Shing Wang’s Giselle (Act II pas de deux)--an altogether transporting vision of muted self-sacrifice and aching love, even though Serge Lavoie, her Albrecht, went through his melodramatic motions nearly devoid of kinetic trajectory.

No matter what else the struggling company offered in its 10th anniversary event, kudos are in order for the above.

Also credit artistic director David Wilcox with reaching out to a wider audience. Helen Coope’s “Aymara,” for instance, filled the ethnic slot with an attractive suite notable for its high PC quotient.

And David Allen’s “Etc!” celebrated ‘40s swing music with a cast of high-stepping Fred-and-Ginger sophisticates--all of them savvy and slick--framed against a glittery city skyline. But maybe the company needs another name change just to insure truth in advertising.

It did revert to type for Wilcox’s “Faust Symphonique,” a showy classroom ballet that gave his students a small opportunity but exposed the choreographer’s weakness in matters of musicality.

Among the other pas de deux, Lisa Ann Cueto, well-studied in a rote sort of way but much too reticent for a bold “Don Quixote,” at least had the authoritative Wheater as her partner. She could take a lesson from Yan Lin, seductively kittenish in “Harlequinade,” with the gangly Alexander Greschenko doing his muggings a la Russe.

Galina Shlyapina, partnered by a deficient Lavoie for the “Sleeping Beauty” (last act pas de deux) smiled even more bravely when he barely caught her in the fish dives but danced with passionate abandon in a brief moment of “Faust.”