A Melting Pot Spices His Ballet : Dance: Choreographer Randy Duncan uses disparate styles to create “A Tri-Fling,” which will have L.A. premiere on Friday.

Randy Duncan’s dances are the choreographic equivalent of what we used to call the melting pot. Part African-influenced jazz, part American modern and part classical ballet, they manage to meld disparate styles into a surprisingly coherent whole.

And that’s the fun of it, says Duncan, whose “A Tri-Fling” will have its Los Angeles premiere Friday, as part of the Joffrey Ballet’s Music Center engagement, which begins Tuesday. “Combining all the elements of jazz, modern and ballet just makes it more interesting,” says Duncan, 35, speaking by phone from his Chicago home. “Most people look at the eclecticism and say it’s refreshing.”

Yet for all Duncan’s stylistic mixing, he places a premium on making dance that is emotionally accessible. That’s why he often focuses on romantic relationships. And “A Tri-Fling” is no exception.

The story is a love triangle in which one woman is torn between her convenient, if tepid, relationship with a Steady Eddie-type and a torrid affair with the sexy stranger who lurks nearby.

The dance, which was commissioned by Joffrey artistic director Gerald Arpino, premiered in April at New York’s Lincoln Center. It is set to a commissioned score by Tommy Mother, a Chicago-based musician with whom Duncan has previously collaborated.

Born and raised in Chicago, Duncan’s earliest training was in ballet. Yet he soon began to explore other styles, especially jazz and tap, since they were what was available in his community.

Duncan also took some modern dance during his adolescent years. But it was nothing like the rigorous training that he received once he joined the Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theatre, a primarily modern company, in 1974. He was 15 years old at the time. “(The early training) wasn’t modern the way I learned it with Joseph, who was strictly a Graham and Horton kind of guy,” Duncan says.

He started his “honest training” with Holmes’ company. There, Duncan worked with dancers from the Alvin Ailey, Martha Graham and Joffrey companies, who taught master classes. Yet it’s Holmes and his former associate artistic director, Harriet Ross, whom Duncan cites as the primary influences on his development as an artist.

After Holmes died in 1986, Duncan rose to the rank of company artistic director, a position he held until 1993. In the wake of his split with the company last year, Duncan eventually pulled the rights to his works, leaving the Holmes Dance Theatre no choice but to drop his works from its repertoire.

He has won the Windy City’s Ruth Page Award for outstanding choreographer of the year three times (in 1988, 1990 and 1992) and is devoted to teaching as well as choreography. In addition to the African-influenced jazz classes he teaches here in the U.S., Duncan also makes semiannual trips to Mexico City and Guadalajara to teach master classes.

Teaching, in fact, is how he first made the transition from dancer to choreographer. “I never knew I had the ability to choreograph,” says Duncan, who created his first jazz dance on six members of Holmes’ company in 1979. “I was asked to teach jazz because I had a background in it. But then I would go into class and realize that things were just popping out of my head, like a writer writes. It was easy for me.

“I tended to stray away from the things that Joseph was doing because I didn’t want people to think ‘it’s a chip off the old block,’ ” Duncan continues. “He was into adagio movements and group work. I wanted to be different, so my stuff was lightning fast.”

Since then, most of Duncan’s choreography has been done on modern and jazz-oriented dancers, although he has also created some works for regional ballet troupes. “A Tri-Fling” was his first venture with a ballet company of the Joffrey’s caliber, but he “felt right at home” nonetheless. “I guess it’s because I had a company for so long, and I understand the pain that dancers go through and that there should be a respect both ways,” he says.

“They were a little nervous and so was I, but once we got started it was just like being at home--except that you’re running into Baryshnikov and Mark Morris rehearsing right across the hall.”

* Joffrey Ballet, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown, Tue., 7:30 p.m. (“Light Rain,” “The Garden of Villandry,” “Les Presages”); Fri., 8 p.m. and Sat., 2 p.m. (“Les Patineurs, “Return to a Strange Land,” “Les Presages”); Wed.-Thur., and Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m. (“Billboards”). $15-$55. (213) 480-3232.