DANCE : F-o-l-k Is a Four-Letter Word : Cultural biases die hard, but if choreographer Frank Guevara can help it, they may soon pass. His troupe Dance Theatre of East L.A. performs hyperathletic and thoroughly modern works.

For Frank Guevara, there’s more to life than Mexican hat dances.

The modern dancer-choreographer doesn’t believe that all Latinos should have to stick to folk forms.

“There’re a lot of people who don’t accept modern work, who think that ethnic dance is what you should be doing,” the East Los Angeles native says over lunch in a small Little Tokyo eatery.

“They still see that as being the only dance for Latino people. We’re going into 1995, and people still believe that.”

Cultural prejudices, it seems, die hard--especially when they come from close to home.

“I know my family and people, and if they have money, they’d rather go see a folklorico group than modern work,” says the outspoken Guevara, who has leveled similar charges of anti-modern bias at such key local festivals as Dance Kaleidoscope, an annual event that has twice rejected his work.

Yet Guevara isn’t letting that attitude go unchallenged. His company, Dance Theatre of East L.A., which performs at Nosotros Theatre in Hollywood from Thursday through Sunday, features work that is a far cry from folklorico. The bill, which is closed to viewers under 18 years of age, includes several premieres, as well as two Guevara works that have been significantly recast.

A terpsichorean Evel Knievel, Guevara is best known for the kind of overtly athletic, task-oriented dances of the increasingly popular Southern California style known as hyperdance. And like his fellow Los Angeles-based ninja daredevil choreographers Mehmet Sander, Joel Christensen and Jacques Heim, among others, Guevara pushes his performers to their limits with works that often involve potential physical peril.

Within that rubric, of course, there’s room for interpretation.

“A lot of people say hyperdance is the same old thing in the same old way,” Guevara says. “That’s like saying, ‘Oh, it’s another ballet’ or ‘It’s another modern piece.’ People in the audience limit themselves just by saying that. It’s a style and a foundation, and you do your own thing with it.”

Besides, Guevara doesn’t only do hyperdance. He also makes more conventional modern works that entail persona, if not plot.

“Since my work is dance-theater rooted, if you don’t have a passion, you can’t do it,” he says. “Obviously technique is there, but my work is rooted in emotion.”

“The more athletic or hyperdance dances have more focus, and the more theatrical ones are more emotional. Sometimes the (two styles) come together, sometimes they don’t, but I treat both of them equally.”

The Nosotros program will include two Guevara premieres. “Tres” (Three) is a hyperdance piece that pits two women against one man, in a contest involving concrete blocks and two-by-fours. “Amarrado” (Tied) is a solo performed by Bogar Martinez that Guevara says is “about a person not being able to let go.”

The third premiere is a duet commissioned from L.A.-based tango artists Alberto Toledano and Loreen Arbus. “Reto” (Challenge), performed by Guevara and Martinez, is “a technically hard piece (featuring a duet between) two Latin men without a touch of femininity,” Guevara says. Also on the bill will be previously seen Guevara works, including one of the choreographer’s trademark solos, performed by Domino Fernandez.

It is a varied, though representative, sampling of the repertory of an artist coming into his own. But it was no small feat for Guevara to have made it this far.

The choreographer, 29, was born and raised in East Los Angeles and started dancing when he was in elementary school. A few years later, he found his way to the multiuse Eastside arts venue Plaza de la Raza, where he began to take classes in modern dance, ballet, acting and other disciplines.

Then, at 17, Guevara landed his first TV gig, as a featured dancer on a music video showcase.

“It was quick money and exciting,” he says. “So I did a lot of commercial work for a while.”

But the fast buck was no substitute for the creative fulfillment of the dance studio, and so, in 1989, Guevara launched the East L.A. Choreographers showcase. The mini-festival was housed in a former Eastside church known as Casa de las Mexicanas (House of the Mexicans); its purpose was to display Guevara’s own dance as well as that of other Eastside artists.

It was a way to help fill the gap in presenting opportunities for emerging Latino dance-makers.

“I needed to present my work, and the way (to do that) was to do my own (producing),” he says. “We sold out, and The Times reviewed it. It was a positive thing.”

His colleagues were grateful for the chance to be seen.

“The choreographers were happy that it was available,” Guevara says. “There weren’t venues at all for them. I don’t think they lacked talent. I think they lacked opportunities to develop. I lacked opportunities too, but I continued anyway.”

Guevara kept the showcases going for three years, during which time he also began to phase out his commercial work--and he looks back on the venture as being key to his career.

“I’m thankful that I did it because I learned,” he says. “If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. Out of all of us, I think I benefited the most, because I continued polishing my craft.”

From the showcase, the next move was for Guevara to found his own company--which he did in 1992. Currently, Dance Theatre of East L.A. consists of Martinez, Fernandez, Melissa Arambasich, Ed Rocha and Guevara himself, and it is with this troupe that the choreographer has truly begun to make a name for himself.

His style mixes hyperdance with other, more theatrical techniques and typically features Guevara’s trademark macho personas. In “Cursum Perficio” (the work to be performed by Fernandez on the Nosotros bill), for example, a headstrong street person interacts in physically demanding ways with a tire.

Guevara has been influenced by fellow hyperdancer Mehmet Sander. Both choreographers, for instance, make in-your-face dances that seem intent upon testing the body’s limits. But Guevara--who transformed his own physique from the 145-pound dancer’s body he had four years ago into his currently overtly beefy 175-pound form--is less interested in purely formal concerns and more enamored of scene and story than most other hyperdance artists.

The stylistic blend has proved popular, and Dance Theatre of East L.A. is beginning to hit its stride in other ways as well.

“I’m finally comfortable with having good dancers--and by ‘good dancers’ I mean they are technically good and have artistic drive and a focus in life,” Guevara says. “In the past, you hired dancers just because it was a body and he or she could do the movement. But I’m comfortable with my dancers now because I know they’re serious and they can handle the work.”

And that comfort is essential, as Guevara begins to transfer works he originally created for himself onto other dancers.

“Even though the pieces are dear to me, I have to let other people test them,” he says. “It’s harder to step back if it’s a piece I did myself, but I’ve managed to.”

Yet in spite of his progress, Guevara is not one to avoid confrontation. He has, in fact, clashed with prominent Latino choreographers such as Rudy Perez and Francisco Martinez over the issue of racial bias.

Perez, for one, disputes Guevara’s contention that there is any resistance to Latinos making modern dance. “If there wasn’t a bias against me in 1951, why should there be a bias today?” he says.

The charge, he says, is a smoke screen for what he sees as Guevara’s failure to develop his craft: “Using the Latino handle is deceptive. People don’t like his work because it’s too self-indulgent, not because he’s Hispanic.

“There’s promise there, but you need only look at how (Guevara’s) work compares to people like Jose Limon,” Perez says, citing the influential modern dancer.

Such disagreements notwithstanding, Guevara still hopes to bring other members of his own community into the fold.

“It would mean a lot to me if I could get key Latino leaders in the arts and politics to come see my shows,” he says. “Over the years, I’ve been supported on and off by people looking to make a nice gesture, but it would be nice if they would actually come see my work and give me feedback.”

It could have a ripple effect, he believes.

“People follow the role models, and if people see that support, a lot will follow,” Guevara says. “We’re working hard to get people like Gloria Molina and Carmen Zapata out here.”

And should the Latino honchos turn up as Guevara hopes, they will find a man and his troupe who could serve as role models--particularly for other emerging non-traditional artists.

“The company is good where it’s at, and I know we’ll grow together,” Guevara says. “Right now, I want to keep it small and tight. The time will come when I have the resources to have more people. I’m not in a hurry.”

Vital Stats

Dance Theater of East L.A.

Address: Nosotros, 1314 N. Wilton Place, Hollywood.

Dates: Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; next Sunday, 3 and 8 p.m.

Phone: (213) 960-4379.

Etc.: $15; no one under 18 years of age admitted.