Ideas for dance can come from anywhere. Choreographer Patricia Rincon's BodyParts grew out of her knee surgery, and the idea of swapping out body parts as easily as buying a new pair of shoes. Members of Rincon's dance collective shared that experience - mostly through simple movements that mirrored video of skeletons - at the Blurred Borders Dance Festival last weekend.

Rincon's collective sponsored the festival, now in its 13th year. This year the theme was blurring the borders of sound, text and movement.

In BodyParts, movement and x-ray projections produced compelling bony images. Several were clinical and creepy. Think sleeping with a skeleton. Another memorable sequence had a woman caress her male partner with soft hands; you could feel each finger press against his head.

Three towers of white cardboard boxes served as sculpture-like screens for the video. At one point, dancers carefully removed a section to reveal a human form hiding behind a tower of boxes.

Veteran dancers Keely Campbell and Justin Viernes offered the strongest performances and partnering. Sarah Larson's soliloquy that described the leg bones in detail was spot on. Still, the text was such a different tone that it felt unnecessary.

Inserting text into a dance concert is often a risky enterprise. With her new company Background Project, choreographer Alicia Peterson Baskel laughs at the challenge. In Untitled; Center of the Universe Peterson Baskel blurred the line between live and recorded, spontaneous and planned.

Dressed in pink, she talked non-stop about nonsensical things. "When I grew up I became a very tall tree…" and "I'd like to sing to you a little dance…"

Movement was often spastic with no familiar dance forms. It was if she'd purged every dance movement she'd learned, or that she was dancing in reverse.

Three more women in pink joined her experiment (Christine Herde, Jennifer Oliver, and Gina Bolles Sorensen). Baskel's miffed response to herself, and my favorite, "Who'll take you seriously when you put your dancers in pink?"

The major fascination in the work was hearing the rambling text repeat, part of the looped score created in real time by Omar Ramos. (Ramos also did sound editing for BodyParts).

There was an undercurrent of madness. Baskel announced she wanted to start over. Her clones started going out of control. There was more talking than dancing, but clearly, Baskel and her company are on to something with this innovative approach to dance theater.

The quirky and always entertaining Cie Drift (Company Drift) brought its madcap antics to the festival for the third time. The last time I saw the Zurich-based group, a trio of mad scientists in lab coats pureed a tomato and it screamed. That was machine a sons, or sound machine. I was prepared, sort of.

In Black Peter, a trio of men (Massimo Bertinelli, Francoise Gendre, and Peter Schelling) took the sonic experiment to another level. They operated with the conviction of Edison on the brink of a new discovery; so serious and deadpan you had to laugh.

The men attached microphones to the fingers of a glove, their bare bellies, backs and shoes to create a complex percussion score in real time. The microphone crinkling in the crotch of a man's pants was funny for about a minute.

They sang beautifully, especially Bertinelli whose tenor voice is heaven sent. They played keyboards, ukes, and a vintage vacuum cleaner.

My French and Italian recall is rusty. I'm still not sure what the men sang about. There are numerous Black Peter references in history - Santa's cruel assistant elf and a story by Arthur Conan Doyle. But could Drift members know of the Grateful Dead tune? "…Poor Black Peter, he's lyin' in pain, now let's go run and see, run and see, hey hey, run and see." Perhaps.

Amidst the piles of electrical cables and laptops, robots began to flash, roll and clank. In Drift's absurd world, they had personalities. In one dramatic scene, a tall tri-pod robot tipped over.

The audience sighed. The poor little thing was lyin' in pain. It was all carefully choreographed to let viewers see the charming robots as integral parts of the ensemble. Timing was critical. It was also harmless fun that harkened to little boys smashing up their toys.

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