Degenerate Art Ensemble's creators talk about what makes them tick

The artistic directors of Degenerate Art Ensemble, Joshua Kohl and Haruko Nishimura, aren't just creative partners but husband and wife — so their imaginative lives are intricately linked with their home life. Gentle and humorous in manner, they gamely answered questions last month about how they dream up the surreal extravaganzas that characterize DAE.

Nishimura usually comes up with "the initial kernel," Kohl says, often in the form of a single powerful image or figure. The character, Nishimura explains, can emerge from many different sources: ghost stories, folk tales, dream images.

Kohl will then "poke" her once she's had an idea, trying to make her articulate it more cohesively. Nishimura will be protective of a concept in its early stages, shutting herself away and asking herself: "Why do I love this thing? Why is it speaking to me?"

As their collaborators "jam" on the idea, story elements and the means of staging them begin to fall into place. In rehearsals, performers are pushed to improvise, Kohl says, until they start "seeing the thread. ... It's like you could take any two characters and you can find a story between them."

This "fairytale-ish thinking," as Kohl calls it, can take on a variety of topics: greed, anger, love, appetite, travel, mystery, transformations.

"Everything is approached from a visceral place," he says. "What do these characters feel? What do these characters see? How can we express what these characters are experiencing in a way that's not telling the audience in words how they're experiencing it?"

Moral calculations also come into play onstage.

"A bad person — is he really bad?" Nishimura asks. "Does a good person have perversities or obsessions?"

DAE takes its name from the "Degenerate Art" exhibition of 1937, a display of works (many now viewed as 20th-century masterpieces) purged from German museums by the Nazis. By reviving the name, DAE is indicating its commitment to "internationalism, interdisciplinary practice, intellectual rigor and open expression that expands political, ideological, intellectual and artistic boundaries."

All those qualities should come into play May 12, 19 and 26, when DAE presents a new site-specific production, "Red Shoes," based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale. The performance will start in the Frye museum, move to the courtyard of nearby St. James Cathedral and then spill into the streets. It features a score for string quartet, chorus and marching band by Kohl and Jherek Bischoff, and choreography by Nishimura, Amy O'Neal and Trinidad Martinez.

Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times arts writer