‘Basement’ revelry

“Are you an artist? You look like you need some money,” said Maria de Medici, a.k.a. Julia Steinmetz, as she tucked play “donor dollars” in the blouse of a reveler at the REDCAT ‘Round the Clock gala in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Steinmetz and her collaborators were dressed as fat cats and arts patrons -- Peggy Guggenheim, Charles “Two Buck Chuck” Shaw, Paris Hilton -- and, accompanied by an ice sculpture of a female torso that dispensed pink martinis from one breast, parodied support of the arts by signing rubber checks.

Celebrating the opening of REDCAT (the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), the all-night party began at 6 with a “Prime Time” $1,000-a-head dinner, continued with $125 cocktails and hors d’oeuvres in the galleries, and culminated with the post-midnight “After Hours” bash, where $10 got partygoers Rice Krispie treats and a chance to see and participate in dozens of art installations.

“Is that really her?” asked one guy as he jogged on a rubber mat embedded with sensors that advanced a grainy film of a semi-nude “Marilyn.”

“Keep running!” exhorted his friend when the guy stopped -- and the film, which a sign warned was “powered by your desire and willingness to work for what you want to see,” started to play backward.

“I’m dressed as Disney Hall,” confided one young woman wrapped in silver Mylar as she entered the REDCAT Theater, where the 24-member pop choral group Polyphonic Spree, dressed in choir robes, filed onstage, manned harp and drums, theremin and trumpet, and launched into “It’s the Sun” with such gusto it might have been a revival of “Godspell,” an impression furthered when vocalist Tim De Laughter shook his rock-disciple hair, stood on a speaker and thrust his open palms at the ceiling.

“We consider ourselves the basement of that wonderful concert hall upstairs,” said Sherill Britton, who coordinated the exhaustive event, while sipping a cocktail at 2 a.m. “What you hear upstairs is mainstream. What you hear and see down here is the next wave.”

Which is one way to describe what Liam Mooney & Friends were doing in the parking lot, Styrofoam coolers between their knees and dowels in hand, which they ran lightly over the coolers, a noise that sounded like an orchestra warming up, until Mooney gave the word and they began sawing into them, a stunning disharmony that evoked chainsaws, monkey screeches, human screams and dental drills. Women covered their ears, men took two steps back, but no one left until the boxes were reduced to little white pills.

Perhaps the most affecting performance of the night took place just outside REDCAT’s front door, where Eli Presser worked a small wooden puppet, on strings, accompanied by 1920s French music. As Piaf’s voice trembled, the unadorned mannequin crawled across a box, mournfully held his head, tried to stand, fell, and crawled again. The site of Presser, wearing what looked like a 19th century undertaker’s suit, conjuring bereavement in a wooden man in the mist at 3 in the morning, was anachronistic, peculiar and splendidly moving.