Neofest to Dish Out the Latest of the Latest : Stage: Sushi Performance Gallery’s annual spring event, known for new and often unusual contemporary performers, will include six different programs this year.

Most presenters in these troubled times are looking for the tried and true. Shows with a track record. Performers with name recognition.

Not Sushi Performance Gallery, whose artistic mission is to sponsor the latest in contemporary performance art, theater and dance. And, during the annual spring Neofest, it presents the latest of the latest.

The whole idea behind Neofest, in its ninth year, is to showcase performers who have not appeared at the six-week festival before.

The program begins tonight with the West Coast premiere of Donna Uchizono & Company and includes six programs, concluding with the West Coast premiere of Ron Brown’s “Conversations in a Whisper” May 16-18.

This year, only one of the performers even has been at Sushi before--Rachel Rosenthal. A grande dame of performance art, Rosenthal will bring her latest work, “Pangaean Dreams” to the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art space May 3 and 4.

“Pangaean Dreams,” a San Diego premiere, is the only offering that is not also a West Coast premiere. Rosenthal’s ruminations on continental drift and her personal aging process played at the Los Angeles Festival last fall.

Elsewhere, booking the unexpected is considered risky business. But Sushi audiences traditionally have made Neofest the most popular portion of the season, with about 10% greater attendance than at Sushi’s year-round programming, according to Lynn Schuette, the gallery’s executive director.

“We see Neofest as a way of highlighting the field,” Schuette said. “You can buy a six-week pass and immerse yourself in it. We see it as a mechanism for educating in a more focused way.” Passes for the entire series are available through Sushi, as well as tickets to individual events.

And sometimes, too, audiences at Neofest get to see performers on their way to becoming famous.

Eric Bogosian and his now well-known work “Drinking in America” was once a Neofest offering. Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck and Tim Miller, who became known as “the NEA Four” when their grants were revoked by the National Endowment for the Arts, were all once presented in Neofest.

Because Neofest is supposed to give a picture of the spectrum of the new dance and performance art, Schuette and managing director Vicki Wolf pore over 30 to 50 videotapes a year, looking not only for quality but for balance of both style and experience. Schuette said she saves the best of the year for Neofest.

This year the dance company Donna Uchizono & Company, which opens with “Short Tahitian Temper” is followed by a “duologue” about the African-American experience by Robbie McCauley with Laurie Carlos. McCauley and Carlos will perform “Persimmon Peel” and “Sally’s Rape,” a story about McCauley’s great-great grandmother’s life as a slave, April 18-20.

McCauley met Carlos when they were both performing on Broadway in “For Colored Girls . . . Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf.” The Southeast Community Theatre regional production of “For Colored Girls” is, coincidentally, opening on the same night as the Neofest pieces.

Next up, in what Schuette describes as “the comic relief” department, is a cabaret style performance by Dancenoise/Mimi Goese/Tom Murrin in “The Full Moon Show,” April 25-27. Then comes Rosenthal, May 3 and 4, followed by construction worker/performer, Marty Pottenger, who builds actual walls and frames doors on stage as she talks about lovers and ex-lovers, childhood and hope, May 9-11. The series concludes with Ron Brown’s Evidence May 16-18.

All the shows, except Rachel Rosenthal’s “Pangaean Dreams” will be shown at Sushi.

Neofest will run from today through May 18, with performances at 8 p.m.

* “San Andreas” & “Siren,” Donna Uchizono & Company, today-Saturday.

* “Persimmon Peel” & “Sally’s Rape,” Robbie McCauley with Laurie Carlos, April 18-20.

* “The Full Moon Show,” Dancenoise/Mimi Goese/Tom Murrin, April 25-27.

* “Pangaean Dreams,” Rachel Rosenthal, May 3 and 4.

* “The Construction Stories,” Marty Pottenger, May 9-11.

* “Conversations in a Whisper,” Ron Brown’s Evidence, May 16-18.

All performances, except Rachel Rosenthal’s “Pangaean Dreams” will be presented at Sushi Performance Gallery, 852 8th Ave., San Diego. “Pangaean Dreams” will be presented at the San Diego Museum of Art, 700 Prospect St., La Jolla. Tickets are $42 general admission for the series, $30 admission for the series for Sushi members, $12 for general admission for individual events, $9 for Sushi members for individual events. General admission for “Pangaean Dreams” only is $15, $12 for Sushi members . 235-8466.