THE New 42nd Street’s New Victory Theater – New York’s first and only theater devoted to kids – offers a wide variety of theater to whet the youthful appetite. Among that variety comes a determined, and well-judged, introduction to dance.

This season it is offering four companies in a series called ”Step Lively: Dance at the New Victory,” and first up, starting yesterday and running through Sunday, is the Doug Elkins Dance Company.

The Elkins troupe, with its accent on athletic physicality, makes a perfect introduction to dance for youngsters already accustomed both to music videos and televised sports. It actually has something genially in common with both – yet this does not distract or even detract from its qualities as dance.

The pieces run the movement gamut from classic ballet and modern dance to break-dancing, kung fu, yoga, kick-boxing and vogueing – you name it. And the music – similarly eclectic – ranges from rap to Handel, from John Adams to James Brown.

The most considerable and considered piece on view was the final ‘More Wine for Polyphemus,” a plotless, full-company work. But unquestionably the most popular, where the reaction developed from shy, tentative giggle to full-blown guffaws, was the knockabout ”Duo” from Elkins’s early ”The Testosterone Diversions,” performed to silence and thuds by Luis Tentindo and Elkins himself.