Blending Classical, Popular Dance Forms

Sharing a bill at the Keck Theater of Occidental College in Eagle Rock Friday night, two local groups--Dance Electric and Kin Dance Company--had in common their use of popular dance forms and a classical dance base. “It’s like ballet, only less . . . artistic,” an audience member was overheard explaining beforehand. Well, only sometimes.

Happily with Kin, “less artistic” probably just meant “more accessible.” In “The Grind,” for instance, choreographers Frit and Frat Fuller created a workplace fantasy that evoked both the ennui and active angst of paid-labor routine. As a stylishly bored dreamer bursting into gymnastic reveries at his isolated desk, Kenji Yamaguchi was superb. He was joined by a corps of guys in suits or overalls or shirts with name tags, whose sustained dance phrases were goosed by the attack of street dancing. Taped music was from Scorn and Funky Green Dogs.

Just as “The Grind” was dominated by the riveting Yamaguchi, eyes were drawn almost solely to Lisa K. Lock in the Fullers’ “All About Grace,” with live percussion and taped versions of “Amazing Grace.” Tall, bald and perfectly articulate, Lock moved with catlike agility while five dancers advanced and retreated on a ramp--always with a studied audience awareness the choreographers often build into their work.

Separating the two new pieces was the Fullers’ 1996 hoot-producing toilet fantasy, “Viewer Discretion,”in which three coyly macho men are seized by various boogaloo beats while reading in the bathroom.

The Dance Electric portion of the program was Part 2 of “Chronicles of the ‘N’ Zone,” by Veronica Apodaca-Mendonca, expanding on a briefer piece from last August. Skimming the surface of several dance styles and ‘70s clothing options, the collection of rambling scenes continued to explore a simplistic sort of futuristic, spy-drama, kitsch- that- swallowed- Las- Vegas- but- wants- to- be- artistic genre. If you can follow that. But it’s hardly worth the trip.