A sneak peek at fest offerings

Twenty-two artists, 16 world or U.S. premieres, puppets, performance art, dance, multimedia, theater, music - there's a lot to digest in the 2008 Live Arts Festival. Here's a sampling from this rich, 16-day smorgasbord:

"Bodies in Urban Spaces": Viennese choreographer Will Dorner leads a group of dancers through Philly, beginning at LOVE Park, as what fest director Nick Stuccio calls "an amoebic structure that'll morph around various architectural sites around the city." (Sept. 5-6)

"Another Sleepy Dusty Delta Day": Inspired by Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe," choreographer Jan Fabre creates a piece about love and suicide for Croatian dancer Ivana Jozic. (Sept. 10-13)

"Disco Descending": The sequel to 2006's "Suburban Love Songs," director/choreographer Karen Getz's new piece sends Orpheus and Eurydice into a 1978 underworld of wide lapels and Village People. (Through Sept. 7)

"THE MeLTING BRIDgE": Chameleonic actor Thaddeus Phillips and the Lucidity Suitcase International follow last year's "Flamingo/Winnebago" with a multimedia journey across the Americas. (Sept. 10-13)

"Sea of Birds": Philly performance artist Sebastienne Mundheim works in fragments of childhood memory, using puppetry and paper cultures to breathe life into memories of a youth spent in an Eastern European displacement camp, juxtaposed with storybook fantasy. (Aug. 29-Sept. 2)

"Louder": Norwegian arts group Verdensteatret projects films shot along the Mekong Delta in Vietnam against a large-scale installation of megaphones, metal figures and a giant mechanical spider. (Sept. 11-13)

"Flesh and Blood and Fish and Fowl": Local performance artists Geoff Sobelle and Charlotte Ford take over an abandoned West Philly Rite Aid to evoke an absurdist (or maybe not quite), postapocalyptic future where wild animals reclaim urban spaces. (Sept. 9-13)

- Shaun Brady