Now here’s something that sounds curiously, strangely, bizarrely intriguing: Artery 24, a series of performances — many them movement-based — taking place outside and inside the nooks and crannies of the Soap Factory, from 6 p.m. Friday till 6 p.m. Saturday.

The live, experimental showcase — now in its second year — features new work by emerging artists. Writer/director Rachel Perlmeter brought the whole thing to my attention with an email about her show, "The Ballets Russe Project: THE PERILS" (4 p.m. Saturday). The production focuses on "The Little American Girl," a central figure in the Ballets Russe’s 1917 "Parade," Cocteau and Picasso’s cubist ballet.

"THE PERILS imagines her in a series of sudsy misadventures amidst the strange and perilous nooks of the Soap Factory,"” Perlmeter wrote.

At 5 p.m. on Saturday is "Chronic Fault," by Labor Force Dances, Stephanie Blackmon Woodbeck’s feminism-based modern dance company. The highly physical piece reportedly tests the strength and endurance of dancers under the pressure of the current economic recession. And at 8 a.m. Slackerdancer Aerial turns the bowels of the factory into an aerie for performances on trapeze and silk/tissue apparatus.

The whole thing kicks off with an opening ceremony by Black Sun of March Dance Co. Sounds like an excellent warm-up to the Fringe Festival next week.

Free performances begin at 6 p.m. on Friday, July 24, and run until 6 p.m. on Saturday, July 25. The Soap Factory, 518 2nd St. SE, Minneapolis. 612-623-9176.