Ong King Arts Center's actual first anniversary was in February. The first Friday in February, to be exact.

So why are Jonathan Heraux and Cristian "See" Ellauri — co-founders of the Chinatown performance space and all-things-art gallery — celebrating the occasion belatedly at tonight's First Friday?

Blame it on the butoh.

The duo were so deep into planning Ong King evenings such as tonight's typically eclectic First Friday open house, they simply forgot. Stop by Ong King tonight and you'll find avant garde Canadian guitarist/performer The Genie, Heraux's longtime world beat jazz-n-funk band Quadraphonix, slam poets, jugglers, burlesque and works by every local artist Ong King displayed in its first year of existence.

"It's like a circus in here," Heraux said, describing Ong King's everything-but-Coco- Chandelier-in-the-kitchen-sink approach to slotting performers for its popular First Friday gallery openings. "Just so you know, none of it ever goes very smoothly. People are stepping on each other. Costumes are flying. We're running around. It's insanity. ... But somehow we pull it off every time."

"There's nothing like merging aesthetics," said Ellauri, a theater director and performer fond of employing a similar diversity of elements into his own original work. "You can come here and dance your head off for a half-hour ... sit down and listen to a spoken word piece next ... then just release and get ecstatic with a band that's just out of its world for another half-hour.

"That blending of different styles? When I go out ... that's what I want to go see."

Heraux launched Ong King Arts Center with Ellauri a year after the disappointment of having his lease abruptly pulled from under him on a similar project — the gallery/performance space called On The River. He'd renovated the ground-floor space in a century-old River Street building with his own hands and much of his savings before shuttering On The River in February 2005 after little more than a year of operation.

"I was sort of (expletive) off for a couple of months," said Heraux, relaxing in afternoon sunlight pouring through Ong King's large windows. "But driving by here, I'd always see a sign on the window that said 'For Lease.' "

That sign was on one of the panes of a two-story North King Street walk-up, right around the corner from On The River. The second-floor space housed eight tiny offices, which Heraux knocked down to create a single large performance space. Seven months of self-renovation, more digging into his savings and one built-but-abandoned in-house surfboard design business later, Heraux opened Ong King with business partner Ellauri on First Friday, February 2006.

The name Ong King is a combination of two musical sounds denoting the venue's location and Chinatown roots.

The airy urban space overlooking fish and vegetable markets on King Street is essentially a blank canvas. Its walls are white; its wood floors devoid of clutter. There's no stage for performances and very few seats for patrons, save for a couple of loungers and the floor. Performers at Ong King are encouraged to become sort of organic to the space as part of their art.

"This place is meant to be open to everybody. It's an empty space," Ellauri said. "It's about having that sense of sustainability. That I can come here and perform anything. I can feel free to take risks. I can feel free to state what my opinions are about the world ... to say what's going on in my heart, what's going on in my mind."

Ong King hosts afternoon and evening classes and workshops on interests such as sustainable living, belly-dance, swing dance, acting and even qigong healing-through-breathing techniques throughout the week. A Sunday evening open-mike night often creeps into the wee hours of the a.m. The partners hope to open an artist co-op in a vacant space down the hallway from Ong King — offering small, affordable non-live-in spaces for artists to do their work. A recording studio is also planned.

Ong King's busiest night is always its First Friday open house and its wickedly diverse co-mingling of gallery and performance art. The partners collect a portion of Ong King's income from instructors who teach classes there and private rentals for parties and performances. Both Heraux and Ellauri use the space for their own artistic endeavors.

"But First Friday is how we pay our rent, basically," Heraux said.

Take a walk down King Street from First Friday's Nu'uanu Avenue nexus tonight and find out exactly what feeds the landlord.

Reach Derek Paiva at dpaiva@honoluluadvertiser.com.