Next month, a taste of one of Japan's oldest folk arts comes to Tokyo's National Theater -- a two-day program of Shiiba Kagura, a colorful and profoundly religious dance that hails from a remote region of Kyushu.

Shiiba is a sparsely populated village, encircled by peaks and steeped in history and legend. Residents still cherish the tale that surviving warriors of the Heike clan took refuge there after their defeat by the Genji clan in the Battle of Dannoura in 1185.

The village's rich traditional culture is said to have inspired Kunio Yanagita (1875-1962), who visited Shiiba in 1909 as an official of the Department of Agriculture, to make a midcareer switch to ethnology and folklore, establishing himself as Japan's first and foremost folklore expert. The gem of Shiiba's rural heritage is kagura, performed by villagers on freezing winter nights during November and December.

Kagura, generally translated as "Shinto dance," exists all over Japan. While versions from other regions typically feature a re-enactment of Shinto creation myths, such as the Sun Goddess Amaterasu's retreat into a rock cave, Shiiba Kagura is distinguished by its dedication to local kami (deities). It also shows the influence of shugendo, or mountain asceticism, which can be detected in the phrases of certain chants learned long ago from yamabushi, wandering mountain monks.

Each of the 27 hamlets of Shiiba Village have distinct dance repertoires, and this year, the National Theater has invited dancers from the hamlet of Take-no-Edao. This community's performances are renowned for their elaborate staging, as well as the skill and grace of the dancers.

Often running through the night until sunrise, kagura dances are intended to propitiate and entertain the gods. First, the Mikoya, a 3.5-sq.-meter performance space, is roped off by a sacred cord. An altar is installed against the wall, piled with offerings representing harvests from the mountain, farm and sea. In Take-no-Edao itself, large chunks of fresh boar meat are offered by local hunters -- though not at the National Theater!

The musicians take their seats and begin by offering chants in praise of the tools used to make the sacred decorations. Invocations are muttered to solicit the divinities to descend and join in the evening's merriment, and dancers perform to celebrate the start of an auspicious event. Dances follow one after the other in praise of the local kami, honoring deities of hunting, farming and so on.

As the night progresses and the merrymaking reaches its height, masked dancers appear and are greeted with warm applause -- these represent kami who have been lured into the festivities. Dancers making mischievous gestures tempt the audience, too, to invade the Mikoya.

Then at dawn, after the prolonged camaraderie between divinities and humans, the gods return to the heavens, sent on their way with shouts and chants. The program at the National Theater will condense this whole night of festivity into just two three-hour shows.

In village performances, the kagura dances are directed toward the kami, represented by the altar of the Mikoya and the audience sits on the three surrounding sides. At the National Theater, a creative approach has been taken to accommodate this traditional staging: The audience take the place of the kami! The altar is thus in the foreground, but carefully designed so as not to impede the audience's view.

Take-no-Edao creates two Mikoya, one indoor (uchi-koya) and the other outdoor (soto-koya). The soto-koya, representing the shrine garden, has also been adapted for the theater, and is here set up at the rear of the stage. The soto-koya is demarcated by a hedge of fresh oak branches from which 12 bamboo poles rise, representing the 12 months of the year. Each pole is decorated with red, green and white cut paper, from which streamers of red and white cloth flutter like maypole ribbons. At the center of the hedge is another altar, this one flanked by a pair of straw snakes.

The curtain rises on Saturday with the resonant sound of a conch horn and drum beats. The celebrants, clad in priestly garb, rush onstage to erect the soto-koya hedge, which has been decorated but is lying flat on the stage.

Following the chant of celebration, a poorly clad traveler enters in a rare piece named "Yadokari (Asking for a Night's Lodging)." The traveler is refused entrance by the owner of the house, who is alarmed by his visitor's tattered attire and ugly appearance. The dialogue, however, conducted in a language too arcane for modern Japanese to understand, reveals that the traveler is a mountain god, making a round of visits to the villages, expelling evil spirits along the way and bringing good ones with him. At the end of the dialogue, the traveler is duly invited in -- but instead takes his leave with a bow.

Audience excitement will surely run high at the appearance of a red-masked dancer in "Shime-hiki Kijin (A Demon God Pulls the Sacred Ornaments)," also on Saturday. Accompanied by a supporting dancer, the demon god gives his blessing to the outdoor altar after shaking it over and over again to test the strength of its construction. The audience is invited to join in with a chorus of shouts to encourage him.

The Sunday program begins with "Mon Kagura," offered to the god of hunting, in which the two performers carry bows and arrows. This is followed by "Inari Kagura," the most difficult piece of all, dedicated to the fox god of farming. The quartet of performers in this piece are usually masked, but the Shiiba dancers instead convey the god's fox nature by adopting a stooping posture, which mimics the fox preying on harmful insects.

Toward the end of the program, supposedly at sunrise, the male straw snake is symbolically slain, representing the villagers' triumph over evil thanks to the assistance of the gods. In jubilation, four dancers take the straw ropes linking the indoor and outdoor altars and prepare to give the gods a good sendoff on their return to the heavens. The villagers all stand in the sidelines, shouting and cheering as the kami depart.

Then a final chant calms the excitement, and rice is once more strewn in a quiet farewell to the gods.