ADF directors Jodee Nimerichter and Charles L. Reinhart selected the six companies from about 20 they saw in Japan last fall.

So what signifies Japanese modern dance? The festival's diversity should illustrate that there's no easy answer to that, Nimerichter says.

"No matter where you go anymore, it doesn't matter which country," she says, "there's not one single notion of what modern dance is."

The festival's first half, today and Thursday, will feature two ADF-commissioned world premieres: "Secrets of Mankind," by Tokyo-based Dairakudakan, known for its eerie looking performers in white butoh body makeup; and "...gosh, I am alive....," created by Dairakudakan dancer Takuya Muramatsu and performed by Kochuten.

The second half, Friday and Saturday, will feature four groups: Natural Dance Theatre with "Circus," which looks at life in the Taisho and Showa eras of 20th century Japan; Dance Theatre Ludens' "Against Newton 2," a study of gravity set to Handel and Bach; Kei Takei's solo "Woman Washing Rice"; and "Shinju ten no Amijima," by Teruko Fujisato, based on an almost 300-year-old tale about a devoted wife of a cheating husband.

"People are taking it and molding it to what they want to do and believe based on their own traditions," Nimerichter says of the variety. "But it's very individual and I think that will be witnessed through this program."

Dairakudakan's and Kochuten's directors offered the following thoughts about their dances last week, speaking through a translator in a post-rehearsal interview in Durham. Kei Takei's associate artistic director commented via e-mail from Japan.

On young audiences and butoh's fright factor:

"Some children are going to be scared, but some of them are going to have fun. Sometimes they think they see ghosts, but what that ghost is depends on each child. ... It depends on their experience. I don't think this is going to scare them."

-- Dairakudakan founder Akaji Maro

On forging butoh's future by letting go of its history:

"Akaji Maro told me, 'You can't find any butoh inside the butoh world. You should be outside of butoh. You need to try to look for it inside of yourself, in your own history, whether it's [lousy] things or messy things, it's OK.' ... I'm trying to move from butoh, but it's still butoh."

-- Takuya Muramatsu

On "Woman Washing Rice" by Kei Takei:

"She leaves it to the audience to interpret the meaning of rice according to their own lives, much as they would when they see a painting. Rice as a metaphor could be interposed with any of the basic foodstuffs of the world's myriad cultures. Washing -- in other words, preparing/working -- is also universal.

"She says that when she dances it, it shows her most honest reality at that moment in time. It is choreographed, yet she isn't able to be ruled by her choreography. Whatever her true spiritual state is at that moment is manifested."

-- Laz Brezer, associate director of Kei Takei's Moving Earth