In childhood, the ‘Carnival of the Animals’ may be more fun than a three-ring circus

I went to the Music Center the other day for the Amazing Blue Ribbon’s annual Children’s Festival in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

I may have been the only man in the crowd of more than 3,000 who heard (and saw) the Philharmonic play Saint-Saens’ “Carnival of the Animals.”

In all, more than 25,000 fifth-graders attended the four-day festival, brought to the center from all over Southern California by school buses.

The yellow buses were lined up three abreast on Hope Street when I walked up to the plaza and found myself caught up in a swirl of shrilling children.

These were the children who had just seen the first performance of the day, and were forming up into their class groups to dance to some of the themes from Saint-Saens’ fanciful zoological suite.

A woman on the balcony of the pavilion was directing them over a loudspeaker.

“Now we’re going to do ‘The March of the Lion,’ ” she said. “Are you ready?”

The music began. I tried to break through a group of girls who were forming a circle, and one of them caught my hand. In another second I would have been in “The March of the Lion.”

I dropped her hand and escaped. I walked around another group of girls who had formed a circle, squatting. The boys squatted inside the circle, forming a tighter circle. Suddenly the boys leaped forward to the center, crouching and pouncing, and began pawing at each other. The girls remained in their outer circle making swimming motions with their hands.

It looked primitive to me.

Meanwhile, 3,000 children who had just arrived began streaming into the Pavilion. I found an empty seat on the right-hand aisle and tried to melt into the crowd.

The orchestra was on the stage at our left. At the right was a striped circus tent with a large screen. A petite young woman in a black suit came out and took the podium. She had a mass of dark brown hair with a chignon from which an unruly tail stuck out like a chipmunk’s. She was Rachael Worby, Philharmonic Youth Concerts conductor.

She said that Saint-Saens was a composer who liked to make jokes, but they were musical jokes. She had the orchestra play a passage from Offenbach.

“Doesn’t that sound familiar? That’s the ‘Can-Can.’ But Saint-Saens decided to take that and slow it down, and turn it from being the ‘Can-Can’ into being this animal.”

The orchestra played slowly and ponderously.

“That’s the tortoise! “ she exclaimed.

Next the orchestra played a graceful passage.

“That’s Berlioz. A gorgeous ballet. You can imagine a beautiful ballerina swirling around. But Saint-Saens had a bass play it, and so it turns out not to be a delicate ballerina--but actually an elephant! “

I think we all got the idea.

A ringmaster came out to introduce the animals, and a clown came out ahead of each animal with a sign that named it. On one side the sign was in English, and on the other in Spanish. Lion/Leon. Like that.

As the suite progressed, figures began to parade across the screen, either animals projected in color, shadow puppets, or human beings in silhouette.

We saw the leon , the elefante , the canguro , the burro feroz , and also the tortuga , which crawled slowly across the screen, on cue, to a slowed-down “Can-Can.” A swan glided across a lake to lovely ballet music.

The theater was packed, but the children were at least as quiet as any Philharmonic audience--perhaps quieter, since there were no cigarette or whiskey coughs.

For most of them, it was their first visit ever to the Music Center. Most of them had been introduced to the “Carnival of the Animals” in their schools by the Music Center Education Division, and had worked out their dances to three themes--the lion, the aquarium and the fossils (which were represented by animal and human skeletons crossing the screen).

The mermaid was in silhouette. She sat on a rock combing her hair. I wondered what it would be like to be here and be 10 years old. Had I believed in mermaids when I was 10? Had I ever believed in mermaids?

After the performance I met Ms. Worby on the balcony above the plaza. She had come out to watch the children dance. I asked her how the children had behaved as an audience.

“Wonderful,” she said. “Oh, I can hear them talking, but it’s all right--they’re talking about the music.”

I noted that they had clapped after each part and whooped and whistled at the end. Not even Isaac Stern had ever heard such an accolade.

“The orchestra played the ‘Carnival’ not long ago,” Ms. Worby said. ‘I asked them whether the adults had clapped after every part. They said, ‘They didn’t even clap at the end.’ ”

We looked down at the plaza where the children were forming into circles to do the lion march. It still looked primitive.

The day was balmy, but I felt a hint of rain.

I asked Ms. Worby how she liked the weather.

“Are you kidding?” she said. “I’m from New York. You know it’s 20 degrees back there?”

Betty Ann Koen, chairman of the festival, had joined us. I asked her what kind of questions the children asked about the Music Center.

“They ask ‘Where’s Dorothy?,’ ” she said, “and how many bathrooms do we have.”

I asked what they’d do if it rained.

“We’d just get our raincoats and umbrellas and go on.”

It rained.