The offbeat music/arts collective brings its vision to BPA on Saturday.

What do sci-fi horror film “Alien” and a Degenerate Art Ensemble performance have in common?

It has nothing to do with the dawn of the interstellar gross-out genre – although DAE’s latest theatrical performance does feature a parasite hatchling.

According to Joshua Kohl, DAE’s co-founder and co-artistic director, the connection is about a body of work being more than the sum of its parts.

“If you listen to the (‘Alien’) soundtrack on its own, the music is really, really creepy and really, really strange,” Kohl said. “But if you put it in the context of something you can see, it totally makes sense.”

This artistic sensibility forms the cornerstone of both DAE’s process and its performances. Each new production requires members to move beyond the “baggage” of their trained discipline and broaden their creative scope.

As DAE developed and staged “Cuckoo Crow,” its latest butoh-theater-cum-garage band production about two baby birds, parallel universes – and yes, a space girl – choreographer Haruko Nishimura taught Kohl and fellow member Josh Stewart to tap dance.

It was not a known quantity for Kohl or Stewart, both composers and musicians. But Kohl says learning tap, as well as the acting and improvisation required to inhabit their mad surgeon “Cuckoo Crow” characters, forced the two to expand their “palette and vocabulary.”

This type of stretch is par for the course.

“Whenever we do a new piece, we have to look at what our weaknesses are and try to pinpoint ‘What is it I don’t know how to do?’” Kohl said. “In a way, you’re starting with a clean slate.”

DAE brings its five-piece band to Bainbridge Performing Arts this weekend as part of the “After Dark” series. While the group won’t stage a full theatrical production of “Cuckoo Crow,” it will play a number of songs from the soundtrack and provide plenty of visual and high-tech stimuli.

DAE has Bainbridge Island ties. Band member Josh Stewart teaches horn at Island Music Guild, and long-time island musician Jherek Bischoff wrote and toured with the group for years.

BPA Managing Director Christopher Shainin also wrote music for DAE back when it went by Young Composers Collective.

The collective, a 17-piece orchestra that had occasionally toyed with performance art, decided to shift its vision in 1999.

Its new name reflected a “performance group” sensibility that emphasized a fully gelled ensemble rather than a “composers’ group” that played others’ compositions.

DAE began to draw on the varying talents of each of its members to incorporate more multimedia, dance and theater. By the time it developed “Cuckoo Crow,” the ensemble had learned to make the stage explode in color and spectacle, with elaborate costuming, animations and high-tech elements building on its orchestral core.

The collaborative process mirrors its open approach to composing and staging, reflected in upcoming plans. With the help of two new dancers whom Nishimura recruited, DAE will interview women performers about their ideal male-female creative environments, then use the findings to create a new working structure with the group’s male members in supporting roles.

“The project we’re about to tackle is going to be pretty crazy,” Kohl said.

While he believes the process shift will have a lasting impact on how the group works, he also says DAE’s overarching goal is to create performances that audiences want to see.

“What we want to put onstage is what we want to see onstage,” Kohl said. “The process is what helps us find new vocabulary and ideas…but the most important part is the audience experience.”

Kohl says that these days, people are listening to “more diverse styles of music than ever.” This renders DAE’s audience base unclassifiable, although the group has tried. Seattle’s Moore Theater, where DAE performs frequently, has a thorough system for gathering audience demographics and reported that DAE has “one of the broader audiences” in both age and artistic bent.

“Part of the reason we have this broad spectrum of people is that we’re concerned with what people see, what they hear and what they feel,” Kohl said. “I think it appeals to people with an interest in art that is unexpected.”

Shainin, who describes DAE’s work as “expressionistic – very dark and stark,” thinks that the show fits perfectly with the edgy vision for the “After Dark” series, which BPA developed to provide more adult entertainment worthy of a Saturday night out.

“‘Cuckoo’ did really well at the Moore, and we just thought it would be great if they could fit it into their schedule to come and do this show,” Shainin said.

Next up is the creation of a “Cuckoo Crow” soundtrack album whose release fete will take the form of a “listening party.”

In a deconstruction of its typically holistic approach, the ensemble will turn out all the theater lights and blast the album in the pitch dark.

“What better way to give people the full experience of it (than on) on a beautiful theater sound system?” Kohl said. “I want to do it myself.”

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Cuckoo band

Degenerate Art Ensemble performs at 9:45 p.m. Saturday at BPA. Tickets are $10; call the box office at 842-8569 or see www.theplayhouse.org. Experience the band at www.degenerateartensemble.com.