By Rita Felciano

IF ANDREW WOOD , San Francisco International Arts Festival director, had any sense, he would have gone back to his native England and settled into the quiet life of an English teacher – exactly what his education prepared him for. Instead, while working as a short-order cook and bartender in 1990, he discovered the power of the arts, on- and offstage. And he was a goner. "The artists were on the forefront of the demonstrations against both Gulf Wars," he recalls. And artists were heavily involved in the fight against gentrification the Mission District – as was Wood, who by that time had landed a job as director of ODC Theater. "I couldn't believe how well-organized these artists were," he says. "We have nothing like this in England."

The more Wood learned about the vitality and diversity of the artists working here, the more he became convinced San Francisco didn't realize what an asset its artists were. Tourists, he figured, come for the views and special events such as Pride and Bay to Breakers – so why couldn't they also come especially for the arts? In 2002, when he started talking up the idea, there were plenty of naysayers. Skeptics remembered the ill-fated San Francisco Arts Festival in 2000; artists worried about the competition for already-scarce funding.

But political organizing had taught Wood a few things, notably that a good idea acquires a life of its own. In 2003 the first San Francisco International Arts Festival turned out better than organizers had hoped. It even broke even. So now, two years later, Wood is at it again, having learned the biggest political lesson yet: think globally, act locally. He's also resourceful, raising funds from other places after his efforts to lobby the cash-strapped city proved unsuccessful.

His greatest challenge: "How do we leverage the little bit of money we have to create an exciting international festival?" Wood found his solution in local artists, many of whom have already learned to think globally. Among them are Scott Wells and Dancers, Janice Garrett and Dancers, Jess Curtis/Gravity, Kunst-Stoff, Steven Pelton Dance Company, and Shinichi Momo Koga of inkBoat, who regularly perform in the Bay Area as well as abroad. Many of the local artists already had outside funding, which allowed Wood to use the festival budget to bring in international groups.

Presented in association with Dance Mission Theater, the 2005 festival introduces Russian avant-garde dance ensemble Do Theater, which will collaborate with Koga on the madcap Nonsense, a series of wild stories involving phrenology and decapitated composers. Also from Russia is the Akhe Group, making its Bay Area debut with White Cabin. At the 2001 Edinburgh Festival, the company's Pooh and Prah proved to be an extraordinarily chaotic, highly theatrical, and thoroughly enjoyable adventure in dance theater. In White Cabin, expect a certain amount of macabre humor and absolutely no linear logic – but lots of physical gestures, props, and images.

Curtis, who regularly works in Berlin, presents the world premiere of Touched: Symptoms of Being Human, a dance-theater piece that examines the ramifications of our relations with each other and the world around us. Commissioned by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the work brings back Matthias Herrmann, the extraordinary composer-musician who played such an important role in Curtis's Fallen a few years ago.

Herrmann is also a member of Fabrik Companie, which presents Pandora 88 at the festival. A duet for Wolfgang Hoffmann and Sven Till, the work is performed in a boxlike, restricted playing field. When I saw them at the 2001 Edinburgh Festival, Fabrik's Petrified Skin impressed me for the quiet intensity of its two dancer-actors building and dismantling a brick wall. The busy Herrmann also collaborates with Motion Lab and Stephanie Maher on the world premiere of Free the Birds and Other Dances, a work promising to instill thoughts of "freedom, fate, and flying."

San Francisco's Erling Wold's Fabrications hooks up with Nürnberg, Germany's Palindrome Inter-media Performance Group for Blinde Liebe: A True Story of Blind Love and Brutal Murder, a new dance opera featuring England's Robert Wechsler and Switzerland's Helena Zwiauer. The movements in this multimedia piece, about a real-life teenage girl whose brother helped her commit murder, are manipulated through EyeCon, Palindrome's motion-sensing technology.

Amid all these edgy offerings, the Royal New Zealand Ballet – another group making its American debut – almost seems like the odd man out. Wood invited them because of his admiration for their choreographer, Javier de Frutos from Venezuela. The company pairs English choreographer David Dawson's A Million Kisses to My Skin with de Frutos's Milagros, set to a pianola version of The Rite of Spring (Wood describes this work as a backstage look at the price of being a dancer); they also present de Frutos's The Celebrated Soubrette, inspired by Liberace and Tennessee Williams.

San Francisco International Arts Festival runs May 18-June 5 at various San Francisco venues. For a complete schedule, go to www.sfintlartsfest.org; tickets are available at (415) 978-2787 and www.ybca.org.