Sleepwalking, sleepdancing

A modern dance performed to Nine Inch Nails—that could give you nightmares. But in the piece REM, the Circle of Dance Repertory Company claws itself far above that Downward Spiral and throws its Huntington audiences into the world of sleep.

REM relies on three different musical styles—a quiet spoken piece, a rhythm section and a techno-metal sound—to accompany the dancers through such activities as washing their faces before bedtime, drifting off into sleep and then tumbling into mad dreams where bodies are swung around like ragdolls. In the chaos, the dancers play like children jumping on their parents' bed. They blink like zombies. They pant just before they wake up.

Choreographer Carl Paris, a former soloist with Alvin Ailey Dance Theater and Martha Graham Dance and current staffer in NYU's dance department, holds the audience in suspense, in part by using different musical styles to switch moods. Sitting in the darkness of the dream, you never know when one part will end and another will begin —which is the way Morpheus likes it.

REM and other performances. 8 p.m. Nov. 5 at Inter-Media Art Center, 370 New York Ave, Huntington, 516-549-ARTS.