A sleek stretching of styles

An authentic, serious new voice in dance, Victor Quijada, a native son of L.A., has created an exciting, seemingly improbable fusion of hip-hop, ballet and modern dance. He has taken the energy and virtuosity of street dancing and married it to the formal structures of concert dance, and he's done it with a probing sense of musicality, a respect for the individuality of his dancers and an ability to evoke meaningful character interactions.

All this was on view when Quijada's virtuosic six-member Montreal-based company, Rubberbandance Group, named after his own street moniker, appeared Saturday at Cal State L.A.'s Luckman Theatre. The program, titled "Elastic Perspective Redux," consisted of seven works commissioned by hip-hop dance and contemporary dance festivals in Canada, Europe and the U.S.

It was a joyous homecoming for Quijada, 32, who started street dancing in Baldwin Hills when he was 8. His circle of influences began widening as he studied under postmodern icon Rudy Perez at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, joined Perez's company for two years, then got swooped up by Twyla Tharp for three years. In 2000, he settled in Montreal, where he danced with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal for two seasons. In 2002, he founded his own company.

The evening began with "Secret Service," a piece set to the cushion dance from Prokofiev's score for the ballet "Romeo and Juliet." Prokofiev's music is weighty, ponderous, ominous, embodying the repressive social forces that will crush the love of Romeo and Juliet.

Quijada's knockout choreography matched the music with aggressive force as a phalanx of five street fighters advanced toward the audience with inventive punches and kicks, men and women being equal-opportunity warriors.

In "sHip sHop Shape Shifting" (to a compiled score of rap music and Bach), a show-off Quijada failed to entice Anne Plamondon, his artistic and life partner, to join him until he had dropped his heavy "cool" armor and recognized her as force on her own.

"Meditations on the Gift," danced by Julio Cesar Hong and Lila-Mae Talbot, and "Before Back Then," danced by Hong and Joe Danny Aurelien, a.k.a. B-boy Dingo, explored similar efforts to negotiate connections or find common ground between two people.

"Reflections on Movement Particles," set to an electronic score by Canadian composer Mitchell Akiyama, however, revealed that Quijada has not mastered longer forms.