If you've ever wanted to see how the other, darker half of the city lives, the Dark Arts Festival might just be what you're looking for. Six months in the making, this year's Dark Arts Festival is a three-day bacchanal of dark music and culture, featuring 22 bands, a gothic fashion show, performance art and poetry, dancing, an art gallery and more. Celebrated at the goth/industrial mecca Sanctuary, it's an event that begins in earnest ever-so-coincidentally on Friday the 13th.

To the casual observer, Salt Lake City seems an odd choice for such an underground happening, expected to draw a local and national audience of goth and industrial-culture devotees, as well as their curious onlookers. Not so, according to Alicia Porter, festival press liaison.

"Why not Salt Lake? Having a large dance club [like Sanctuary] dedicated to gothic and industrial music on two floors every weekend, that's virtually unheard of in any other city in the United States," Porter explains. "Utah's underground has always been a tight-knit community that looks out for each other, in spite of or possibly because of the dominant culture's conservatism." Band committee chair Kelly Ashkettle agrees. "I've DJed in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Cleveland and Richmond, and I have to say that Salt Lake City has one of the stronger gothic/industrial scenes that I've ever seen," Ashkettle explains. "None of these cities can claim a full-time club like we have here at Sanctuary."

From its inception in 1993, the Dark Arts Festival has continually grown in size and ambition, a result of the contributions and hard work of volunteers throughout the underground-in an effort to showcase the goth movement's role in both music and the arts in spite of indifference from the mainstream. Not to say outsiders of the goth culture won't appreciate a unique event like the Dark Arts Festival.

"I believe the dual purpose is both to expose the audience to the local artistry and talent here in Utah and also to bring in national artists that the local audience may not normally get a chance to see," Porter says. "Everyone is welcome at the festival."

In a way, the event is a means of dispelling the many misconceptions some have regarding goth culture, especially in Utah. "I see people here taking comfort together in their shared differences from what the majority of this society wants them to be," Ashkettle says. "At the same time, I also see people who have managed to balance expressing their creative, dramatic and eccentric side in the goth scene with remaining a part of the dominant Utah society. I know several gothic DJs and musicians who are also practicing Mormons. There is no conflict for them; they simply enjoy this form of entertainment and self-expression. Just as a country music fan might enjoy going to a rodeo or 'hoe-down,' and that is what they tell their bishops or anyone else that questions them."

For fans of the dark music scene, Ashkettle assures this year's band lineup is stronger than ever. "We've planned the event to be inclusive of many different underground genres, and we expect to see a variety of people in the audiences as well."

Featured national acts include Hungry Lucy, Bella Morte and ThouShaltNot. However, this year's particular draw has to be David J, founding member of such legendary bands as Bauhaus and Love & Rockets. His new "cabaret oscuro" material-along with favorites from his past bands-will bring the festival to its dramatic close.

Of course, the local goth/industrial scene will be well represented. Joe Ashton of Phono savors the annual exposure the festival brings to his band's particular blend of industrial music. "It gives us and other local industrial bands a chance to really let loose and show our talent," Ashton explains. "Most shows and festivals across the valley are bred more toward a generic college crowd audience. We typically aren't received as well as we are at the Dark Arts Festival.

"Last year was an amazing experience, the music and atmosphere was outstanding, It felt good to play in an atmosphere that fully embraced Phono's music, rather than just accepting it. Definitely, come out and experience the overwhelming experience that is Dark Arts."

"This is a celebration of alternative culture, a chance to experience something emerging and vital, fueled by the same cohesive spirit of the underground that spawned festivals like Lollapalooza," Ashkettle concludes. "It's not just a music event, it's an extravaganza. It's definitely a way of exposing those not familiar with the scene to great music, art, fashion and lifestyle.

"You don't have to consider yourself a dark person to enjoy art that's been labeled as dark."

The 3-year-old Utah Dark Arts Festival is anything but a typical celebration of the arts.

The four-day event at Club Sanctuary, which opened Thursday and runs through Sunday, offers not only music by more than 20 bands, but also performance art, poetry readings, a fashion show, an art show and a gothic aerobics presentation. Musician David J (Bauhaus and Love and Rockets) will showcase his Cabaret Oscuro as one of the festival's headline acts.

The event is sponsored by the Dark Arts Foundation, a Utah nonprofit group dedicated to providing an outlet for artists not fully supported by the Utah mainstream. Any profit will be used to fund next year's festival. The event was launched in 1993 as the First Communion Festival, an effort to showcase Utah bands in the gothic/industrial community. It sputtered after a couple of years and resurfaced in 2001, when the idea of including nationally known artists provided a new direction.

"We decided that in the future we would try to always include performers and artists in our subculture who are well-known in the goth/industrial community," said Kevin Reece, president of the Dark Arts Foundation and an initial organizer of the event.

Salt Lake City has always had a strong following in the gothic/underground scene, according to Reece. Venues such as Club Confetti and the Sanctuary are a result of that interest.

"People who populate the rock scene often think of the Dark Arts Fest as the goth crowd's 'thing' and kind of leave it alone," said Rebecca Vernon, associate editor of SLUG (Salt Lake Underground) Magazine and member of the band Violet Run. "You just have to give it a chance and realize intense rock and goth/industrial music have many common roots."

The Dark Arts Festival at Sanctuary has nothing to do with curses, hexes or jinxes. There is no secret handshake. The annual event presented this weekend by The Dark Arts Foundation of Utah is a three-day celebration of Gothic and industrial culture, music, art and fashion. And everyone is invited.

Kevin Reece, 34, promoter and DJ for Sanctuary and the Dark Arts Festival president, said a popular misconception about the festival is that your average person is not welcome.

"This is simply not true. This is very much created by our scene for our scene, but the idea is not to exclude those on the outside," Reece said in an e-mail interview. "It is a celebration of who and what we are, but everyone is welcome, Goth or not."

A wide variety of entertainment is planned for this year's festival, including an art gallery, a fashion show, performance art and spoken word. Also, some major names in Gothic/industrial music will be playing the festival.

"From the audience's perspective, people will be excited about David J," said festival public relations volunteer Alicia Porter, 26. "He is someone who might not normally tour through Salt Lake."

David J is a founding member of the pioneering Goth band Bauhaus, as well as a contributor to Love and Rockets and Tones on Tail, all of which have retained loyal fans despite eventual break-ups.

His most recent project, Cabaret Oscuro, is, according to darkartsfestival.com, a "very dark, highly visual, starkly theatrical presentation in the best Bauhaus tradition."

The performance will include songs from Bauhaus and Love and Rockets, as well as solo material. Other national acts scheduled to perform include Bella Morte, Claire Voyant, Faith Assembly and Hungry Lucy.

Everyone who works to organize and run the festival does so on a volunteer basis. The Dark Arts Foundation of Utah is a nonprofit organization.

"Everyone who works on this festival does so merely so something like this will exist. We believe in this festival," Reece said. "Anyone is welcome to volunteer, and I am grateful to all who have."

He added that many volunteers have skills they use in their everyday lives that allow them to contribute to the success of the festival.

Both Porter and Reece want people to know the event is not about making money.

"Anything that is taken in is incorporated back into the festival," Porter said.

"It is vital that people who come to our festival know that this is not just an effort to make money," Reece said. "I think if people know this, they will find a deeper personal connection with what we are doing."

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D22.

In the full-strength sunshine of a June afternoon, the boys in shiny vinyl dresses, girls in thigh-high leather and everyone (and their dog) in black boots, black eyeliner and spiked collars look a little -- strained.

But inside the dimly lit Club Sanctuary, the church-turned-club that is the hub of the Salt Lake City Goth scene, a vinyl corset, white contacts and a red velvet skirt look positively natural. Even on a guy.

The Goth scene (short for Gothic) is all about the music and the clothes. Bands showcased at the Third Annual Dark Arts Festival, Salt Lake's home-grown celebration of Gothic/Industrial/Punk music and style, have names like the Pagan Dead, Absinthe, David J's Cabaret Oscuro and ThouShaltNot.

At these concerts, as Salt Lake student Kat McLean -- herself in full regalia -- puts it, "You don't want to be caught dead wearing what someone else is wearing."

Kat buys her drag at Blue Boutique, at fetish sex shops, at Deseret Industries and other thrift stores. She makes all her own "spikes" and sews "quite a bit," mostly altering pieces she buys. And she, like many Salt Lake Goths, buys a lot of online lines like Iridescent Veil, Clothes Whore Designs, Heathen Catastrophe Clothing and Nasty Creatures, all featured at the official Dark Arts Festival Fashion Show, which started promptly at 7 on Saturday.

But the actual fashion parade started Friday the 13th when Goths from all over Utah and beyond started gathering for the three day party.

This year the "nightmare" (as organizers refer to it) has grown up into the Dark Arts Foundation of Utah, a nonprofit organization supporting the dark underground and promoting the arts of underground genres. Funds raised at Dark Arts Festival will be used to benefit future festivals; the event included concerts, a bazaar, a video of last year's festival, the Gothic-Rap project, and Nothing's Goth Aerobics.

Not to mention a three-day fashion parade.

Virginia-based Bella Morte was the surprise standout at last weekend's Dark Arts Festival in Salt Lake City, compelling the notoriously standoffish SLC crowd to get moving. "The Quiet," Bella Morte's third album, furthers a somewhat nondescript but nonetheless pleasant studio presence defined by a hybrid of goth gloom with synthpop hooks. Not quite yet Mentallo and the Fixer, but it's getting there.

-- Jean Carey