Dance Team on a Roll : Entertainment: The Midnight Sun roller-skate dancers dazzle the crowds at Venice Beach--and will appear soon at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

The afternoon sun that warmed Venice Beach on Sunday may have drawn thousands of visitors, but it was the cool Midnight Sun that dazzled them once they got there.

And in March, this group of five roller-skate dancers will strap on their skates, smear rosin on their palms and don their black costumes to perform at the 43rd Los Angeles International Folk Dance Festival.

From the rambunctious boardwalks of Venice to the staid stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion may seem like quite a leap, particularly considering that the group has been together only since September, but the skaters appear confident that their sudden recognition is not simply a matter of fairy-tale luck.

“It is very difficult to get a new art form off the ground. But since we have come together, we have soared like a rocket, combining all different styles into a unique routine,” said Kristina Hill, who along with her husband, Chris Hill, formed the Midnight Sun.

The routine is a visual salad: lifts, hops and spins covering the entire spectrum of dance forms, from the more traditional and fluid jazz, ballet and tap to the fast, upbeat and anything-goes moves of funk and disco.

The dancers move mostly in couples, against the fast, staccato rhythm of a rap number. They execute daredevil acrobatic spins and twists in the air, and all kinds of break-dance moves.

And the crowd eats it up.

“The crowd experiences a strong personal chemistry with the wheels, the acting, the expression, the dancing and the music. It is an unrefined art form that’s growing,” says Chris Hill, a ballet dancer and actor who has been dancing on wheels for the last 10 years.

The onlookers who surrounded them on the boardwalk on New Year’s Eve afternoon were an eclectic mixture too: tourists squinting through camcorders, teen-agers joining in the dance, and a 5-year-old who came up to a dancer during a short break and urged him to “start with your stuff again!”

“It stirs the child in everybody,” said Kristina Hill. “It’s fun to watch because when you dance on skates you can see the music. You roll from one movement to the other.”

Easy as it may sound, the movements clearly call for the agility and strength of a gymnast combined with the grace of a ballet dancer.

“We work very hard; we practice regularly; we watch our routines on tape; we do the moves over and over,” said Demeryst Upshaw, 24.

All five dancers have extensive backgrounds in music and in “dancing on feet,” as they call it.

“Apart from jazz dancing, I played the drums, and that’s where I get my rhythm from,” Upshaw said. “I just conformed my drumbeats to my skates--I put my hands to my feet.”

Upshaw and another Midnight Sun member, Laura von Bergman, recently returned from a skating tour of Japan that included performances in Nagoya and Osaka.

Bergman, an Austrian who came to the United States three years ago, trained as a ballet dancer and also has been a competitive windsurfer.

“Everything that has got to do with balance, I pick up very fast,” she said. “The ballet and the windsurfing help a lot in lifts and spins in the air.”

A key break for the Midnight Sun dancers came a few months ago in the form of a chance encounter with tap dancer Chester Whitmore.

Whitmore, who choreographed the Grammy Award-winning comedy video, “I’m Fat,” has toured Europe five times with his group, the Black Ballet Jazz.

He met the Sun at a studio where “I was rehearsing in another room and happened to see them dance. They saw my group and wanted me to help them out with the technique.

“I was impressed by their moves and told them that it was a good time for them to get an act.”

Still, Whitmore added, “they had to be seen by the right people.” So he recommended the group to Irwin Parnes, managing director of the International Concerts Exchange, the agency that has been producing the Los Angeles International Folk Dance festival for the last four decades.

Parnes, producer and the director of this year’s festival, said he, too, was immediately impressed with their demonstration videotape.

“To do the dances on roller skates was something unique,” he said. “Their precision and their performance would be exciting.”

And so, even though “the roster was complete,” the Midnight Sun was selected to perform at the festival, joining dancers from 16 countries, including Poland, Hungary and the Philippines.

“We have to make it a spectacular thing because it is a great break,” said Daniela Aguilar, 23, the fifth member of the team.

The members admit that it is often difficult to balance their part-time jobs for sustenance and full-time dedication to roller-skate dancing. Money gets tight at times.

There are sponsors, Kristina Hill says, including Reidell, a boot manufacturing company that has supplied them with shoes, and Powell Corp., which provides wheels and bearings. These help, Hill says, but the group still is trying to get the support necessary to obtain a studio where they can rehearse full time.

Nonetheless, the mood of the skaters is buoyant.

“We are taking off, and we are very optimistic,” Chris Hill said. “We know that we are a very productive unit with fantastic versatility. We have members who are skilled in voice, mixing music, acting, choreographing, skating and dancing. And with support, we can really promote roller-skating as an art form,” he said, then broke into a gentle trot followed by a furious spin on his skates.

As a 44-year-old tourist from Spain said: “It’s terrific. It feels as if they don’t have feet. Instead, God gave them wheels.”