`DELI' FESTIVAL OFFERS MOVEABLE FEAST.

Imagine this: It's a hot summer day in New York City, and a crowd of perplexed people has gathered around a Times Square store-front. This used to be a Herman's Sporting Goods store, but now there is a modern dancer in the empty window, improvising, and everyone keeps asking, "What is she doing?"

This was the scene twice daily for two weeks in August, when the second annual "Deli Dances in Times Square" festival brought forty downtown choreographers to the city's busiest and glitziest hub of activity. Last year, the festival took place down the block, in a former deli--hence the name.

"Deli Dances" owes its existence to Anita Durst, a 32-year-old actress whose father, real estate magnate Douglas Durst, owns both this year's building and the former deli. Both locations will soon give way to a high-rise office building, but in the interim Durst has been allowed to use one or the other as a performance space.

Though Durst focuses mostly on theater, last year she invited a friend, choreographer Despina Stamos, to show dances in the deli, which Durst had gutted, painted black, and equipped with basic lights. Stamos extended the invitation to other choreographers, including Tony Silva, who came on board as a producer. With less than a month's notice, they brought together the first "Deli Dances". Its mission was to introduce modern dance to people who had little or no exposure to it, with the hope of inspiring new interest in downtown art. "I'm trying to promote a community, and to give people something different," Durst says. "I love the reaction of the audience. They're really shocked by it."

Last year's festival even generated a following. "After the whole thing was over, people kept coming to the deli," Stamos says. "We found that very heartening." This year's festival was "a dramatic step up," Silva says, with a better equipped theater and twice as many choreographers, including JoAnna Mendl Shaw, Le Minh Tam, Paul Langland, Ariane Anthony, Yanira Castro, Emma Hogarth, Christine Bodwitch and Rachel Cohen.

Like last year, admission was free to the hour-long performances, which took place at 12:30 and 8 and featured four or five choreographers each. Audience members were allowed to enter and leave at will. The strategy was to draw them in with the window performances and cheerful pitches like "Free modern dance!" and "Break out of your shell! See something new!" (and, as a last resort, "It's air-conditioned!"). Audiences included construction workers, families with small children and tourists from across the country and overseas. "Even street people," adds assistant producer Julie Atlas Muz. "There are no restrictions. Everyone deserves to see modern dance."

For the many tourists, Silva says, "Deli Dances" offered another slice of New York City, "on a very grassroots level, which I don't think is represented much in Times Square anymore--it's pretty much glitz and glitter."

The festival also involved a teaser in the Times Square subway station, two "open stage" nights (as in "open mike") and a marathon performance involving twentyseven choreographers on the last day.

The festival has only another year before the high-rise goes up, but its organizers are optimistic. As Muz says, the festival can float: "As long as we have a location where we can get people in, and four walls, we're cool."