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VARIETY SHOW : DANCE DINER COMBO LAYS AN EGG

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If a restaurant puts a varied cuisine on the menu, the chef had better be able to make the blintzes taste just as good as the ham and eggs. That bit of wisdom evidently was ignored by Dance Diner, the disjointedly eclectic effort of a good-humored combo of choreographer-performers.

Its variety show at the Hollywood YMCA on Sunday night included broad dance-comedy and an emotion-larded piece with a Jewish theme, as well as Naomi Goldberg’s candle-lit ballet solo, a trio of ballroom numbers and some disjointed modern dance.

The group teetered from an unfocused parody style (with aren’t-we-funny phony dramatic gestures) to the kind of trite, disjointed and excruciatingly sincere little works usually associated with school recitals. So empty were the latter that at least one viewer kept waiting for them to reveal themselves as sendups of their respective genres.

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Christine Kellogg with Timothy Smith and Daniel Albert in ballroom dances choreographed by Larry Hyman delivered the evening’s most polished performance. (Hyman’s own heavy-handed schlemiel persona has the cloying quality of a child who’s been told he’s irresistible.) In her own solo, “The Dashiel H. Stroll,” Sarah Pogostin displayed signs of wit along with nicely honed technique.

Other performers in the evening’s eight works (different programs are on tap for Sunday and Sept. 27) included six pick-up basketball players who contributed to the planned pandemonium of the finale.

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