Sometimes it’s hard for dance companies to get reviewed, since they generally only get to have a single performance, or a couple performances in one day or weekend. Still they should get a chance to show potential audience members what they missed, so that they might show up the next time the group comes around.

This could be said for Verb Ballets. Word must have gotten around about its previous performance at Akron Civic Theatre last year, for when the company took the stage on March 27, all the seats were filled. That’s a great thing for this group and its performances a few times a year in the Akron area.

It’s also good for the audience, because Verb Ballets put on quite a performance for the few hundred in attendance.

The program featured two new works by Verb Ballets’ associate director Richard Dickinson – “SS Edmund Fitzgerald” and “Cowboy Soul” – which bookended the evening of dance. Both works were created this year but are quite different in theme and temperament.

Dickinson’s “Fitzgerald” chronicles the tragic voyage of the well-known shipwreck. Before the ballet began, Verb Ballets’ artistic director, Dr. Margaret Carlson, noted that there were strong local connections. Most of the 29 lost crewmen came from the northeast Ohio area.

A four-part work, the ballet tells via haunting music and a somberly lit stage the dark tale of people lost and entombed at sea. Via sea chantey and a funeral march section, the seriously conceived dance took on dramatic impact.

Verb Ballets. Photo by Mark Horning

That ballet is quite the opposite from Dickinson’s frolicking and lighthearted “Cowboy Soul.” The eight-part work is set to western traditional music that everyone knows, like “Home on the Range.” Dickinson commented before the ballet that he made sure that he used instrumental versions in order to make it easy for the audience to spend its energy looking rather than listening and singing along.

Still, in watching around as the dancers cavorted and clearly had fun in this piece, you could see toes tapping. You could also see smiles on nearly everyone’s face as this dance version of a mini-western movie (mock gun fight included) played out before your eyes.

There were some striking and pretty fancy western shirts that the male dancers were wearing. Good, solid costume choices.

As much as Verb Ballets brings fresh and new choreography to the area, it also pays tribute to traditional dances that deserve to be seen. For this performance, the group brought to the stage Heinz Poll’s “Wings and Aires,” a piece which Carlson rightly noted as being both beautiful and difficult.

Done in neoclassical ballet style, the ballet is a poignant and charming pas de deux set to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto No. 4.” Beautiful lifts, long and graceful line, and close, tender partnering bring out the fragility of the emotions while portraying the strength of the thematic love ideas present.

In a completely different vein, the program had another brand new work, “Vox Balaenae,” with choreography by Sara Whale. The musical score is a strange and exotic sounding tune for electric flute, cello and amplified piano that evokes the sounds of whales.

Dancers entered from offstage, out in the darkened house of the theater as audience members sat on the intimate setting of the main stage. They gathered, connected with each other, formed together into a kind of pack, and then made their way to the stage.

The clearly modern dance piece underscored the behavior of whales joining together into pods and establishing relationships through their peculiar kind of language.

Carlson noted that the composer wanted the effect of being underwater and was insistent that the performance be done with strong dark blue lighting. The effect worked.

“Vox Balaenae” is a strong, abstract work that is sure to keep a place in Verb Ballets’ repertoire.

If not before, Verb Ballets will be back in the area as part of the Heinz Poll Summer Dance Festival. Those who missed this performance will have the opportunity to see this fine and lively dance company and its interesting and eclectic mix of choreography.