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Halloween, as it is practiced today, seems to be all about the Id, the dark side of the human mind and its basest appetites. Children gorge on sweets; men and women bring out their inner monster, or—in the case of girls who come out as a sexy nurse/librarian/maid/whatever—their inner trollop; and by the end of night, many people have lost parts of their costume and most of their dignity. The illusion collapses and one is left with only a headache or a stomachache—if one is lucky.

On a night when the Id is unleashed, few shows could be as apt as Degenerate Art Ensemble's multimedia spectacle "Sonic Tales." Like the ghosts and fairy tales that inspire artistic director Haruko Nishimura, the production is as whimsical as it is unsettling, and the musical score created by Joshua Kohl and Jeffrey Huston penetrates to the core even when the other senses are baffled.

I will describe the pertformance without giving away too much about the various segments because I do not wish to spoil the little surprises that DAE offers through clever costuming, video projections and the sliding set, which encroaches from all directions and shifts about to create a fractured house for the three main dancers—and Kohl and Huston as trickster ninjas—to frolic, fence and dish out a little destruction.

The show began with Kohl conducting the audience to create an organic soundscape that chittered and shivered with hundreds of clicking tongues and moans. To these ghostly and insectoid sounds, dancer Trinidad Martinez made her entrance. The sheer outfit that she wore concealed little and appeared as but a fragile chrysalis over a vulnerable body, which belied the power and precision of her movements. After moving gently and blissfully about the stage and reacting to the atmosphere as if she were in a pleasant forest or meadow, Martinez was thrown about by an invisible storm which grew fiercer and fiercer until she at last succumbed and the strange, broken house enclosed around her crumpled form as Huston and Kohl's music descended into cacophony...which was then abruptly broken by a surly giant in the attic.

Sound strange? They were just getting started.

Marissa Niederhauser was the second dancer to enter the stage as the set coalesced. She pranced in wearing a shiny sack dress that a pudgy fairy-tale princess might wear...but for the arterial red, wound-like openings around it. When later Martinez's lost woman warily plays with Niederhauser's pudgy imp and grows to trust her, the imp takes a bite out of her new friend and sends her scurrying off, leaving the rabid beastie to prowl and dance about, seemingly eating everything that crawls. As Niederhauser used contortions and facial expressions to convey a broad range of emotions—from anger and frustration to timid playfulness—Nishimura provided the imp's voice behind the scenes, singing of her insatiable appetite for food, booze and sex. Gaping, gnashing, chewing and gasping, Niederhauser's mouth danced as much as her feet to the lyrics: "You breathe out no matter what...Waiting for your voice, let it overflow, fighting the loneliness, fighting the emptiness."

Here, the appetite is a source of empowerment if channeled properly, or the cause and manifestation of insecurity and fears of rejection. Niederhauser said of the role, "It was important for me that the character have complexity and depth. It would be really easy to let it be a simple fat gag or let it become a shallow morality tale on women that want too much. So while I let the character reach the dark places of insatiable hungers and the fear of growing to be more than what nice girls should be, I also wanted the character to become empowered in not just accepting but embracing her hugeness and strength."

Nishimura herself made her entrance not long after, approaching through the sliding walls into center stage at a sinisterly slow pace, beneath the dark and dreamy music of Huston and Kohl. Nishimura's ghostly girl in white spasmed into saltant poses of joy and shock, curled and retracted into a child-like posture of fear and sorrow, then sprung forth again, alternating between the two extremes with perfect emotional conviction. When at last she hesitantly slipped away through a door, and Martinez crept in on the opposite side of the stage, there was palpable suspense at what might happen if the distinct emotional energies of the the two were allowed to mingle and clash. The audience would have to wait to find out.

Before that happened, there would be a slew of other characters introduced and a few comical segments. Some of the kitschier moments were a little tedious, but the show was indisputably dominated by moments of pure genius. In the brilliant and giddy Mother Mothra segment, Nishimura sings behind a kitchen counter about the malevolent mother, who—also portrayed by Nishimura—emerges through a red door projected onto the walls. Despite being a two-dimensional image, the projection readily tricked my eyes into believing that the horned termagant was in fact stomping and swinging in the doorway. (It probably helps that I was sitting close to center in the orchestra. I recommend that others try to get similar seating for future DAE performances, as some effects are certainly better appreciated from this vantage point.) The beastly woman spoke in a demonic voice and summoned, belched and flatulated lightning as Nishimura defended herself with her song and her parasol.

Once the mother was banished, Nishimura again moved to center stage, revealing the amazing "weeble-wobble dress" now famous among repeat DAE audience members. In this setting, Nishimura was one part Red Queen, one part domestic goddess, and one part indomitable woman warrior as she used her whole body to spin and sway in a vermilion vortex, tipping and twirling impossibly far as she battled with ninjas (Kohl and Huston), then joined them in a percussion performance using pots, a spatula, wooden sticks, and the chimes and metal base of the dress.

Niederhauser's second solo performance was even more affecting than her first. Earlier footage of a banana slug crawling along a leaf during a brief interlude had foreshadowed her dance of the Slug Princess. As Nishimura sang the haunting Weaving Song above, Niederhauser crept and crawled with amazing care and restraint beneath an enormous, trailing, golden shawl. The much reviled garden pest was a perfect subject to be transformed into a thing of beauty in a show exploring ids and appetites. As a gastropod ("stomach foot"), a slug might have been a symbol of gluttony and sloth, but here its fragile and gentle nature became its most conspicuous trait.

In the dance and confrontation between the Martinez's lost woman and Nishimura's ghostly girl in white—bound in ghastly geta and draped in woven material that made her look like a doll overgrown with glittering fungus—the pair circled each other as Martinez tried to understand the nature of the apparition and Nishimura looked on with a strange and sinister condescension. Before long, however, the power shifted and it was Martinez who tried to lift and move Nishimura's body, which had lost all of its vitality. The latter maintained a perfect, soulless expression and became as limp as a doll, which made Martinez's futile efforts truly believable and pathetic, not the least bit comical. The tables turned yet again when the doll suddenly seemed to breathe an evil air directly into Martinez, who became as spasmodic as the doll once was.

In the finale, Niederhauser and Nishimura shared the stage as a pair of coordinated opposites that twirled and flipped to create surprising effects using more video projections that summoned the pudgy imp and Mother mothra again without a costume change. The set shook and morphed as the lost woman again appeared and announced, "I'm going to do it," and exorcised herself of these raging Id entities. The audience then provided a soft, constant "shhhh" as silence descended and Martinez's smiling face—now consuming the entire house—looked out with bright eyes, calm and serenity.

Was it a perfect show? I wouldn't say that. Certain segments seemed to exist merely to suggest that the ensemble doesn't take itself too seriously, but ended up being rather droll and distracting. One in particular—a rock performance followed by a band dispute—left the audience restless and elicited only a few half-hearted chuckles. It just didn't seem to fit, which perhaps seems odd to say about a show that has no clear narrative and unabashedly follows its own dreamy logic. However, it did nothing for the cohesion of the whole show, whereas everything else—even the less affecting or exciting parts—at least felt like they had a place. A "tea time" scene was also a bit of a bore, but blessedly brief.

Regardless of these minor complaints, it was still a perfect show for the occasion, and a perfect example of why the ensemble can pack the Moore Theatre on a night when virtually every venue in town and hundreds of houses were throwing a major party. Sometimes, it's a little more satisfying to watch someone else dance and wrestle with their inner demons and appetites than go out and unleash one's own. Or perhaps the audience was just warming up...

In all events, dance and art enthusiasts should look forward to seeing what Nishimura and the rest of the ensemble cook up for their next performance. Halloween may have been a perfect night for their show, but through the magical filter of DAE, I think giant slugs, devilish dolls and gluttonous imps could be appropriate for any holiday or season. An Easter Egg weeble-wobble dress could really chase the hunger and melancholy of Lent away. Or Ninjas...whatever works!