The Movers and the Shaker: The Shows Go On . . . Mostly : Cultural, Performing Arts Schedules Shaken By Thursday’s 6.1 Tremblor

The “Vienna Bulls Choir,” a sculpture at the Museum of Neon Art with bulls that dance to a Busby Berkeley tune, was “pretty badly destroyed” by Thursday’s earthquake. However, other than that, major cultural venues around Los Angeles reported minimal damage from the 6.1 shaker.

Nonetheless, at least five scheduled Thursday-night performances were canceled or postponed, mostly for precautionary measures, and six of 13 visual-art institutions closed their doors on Thursday and many on Friday as well.

The Music Center downtown reported minimal damage to its three theaters, the Ahmanson, Mark Taper Forum and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. “We had some minor damage in the Pavilion Restaurant (atop the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion), basically just some ceiling tiles and broken dishes,” said Sandra Kimberling, president of the Music Center Operating Co. The restaurant was closed Thursday and reopened Friday, she said.

However, Thursday evening’s performance by the Joffrey Ballet at the Pavilion was canceled by Joffrey Ballet management, partly because the public had been urged to stay away from downtown and partly because of the nature of the performance. The Joffrey opened its local season Wednesday night.

Part of the planned Thursday-evening mixed-bill performance, “The Clowns,” is a “very delicate” piece, Kimberling said. “There are helium balloons and a large group of dancers on stage” and “if there was an aftershock and something went wrong in that particular piece, nobody would want anything to happen” to the dancers or the public.

Ambassador Auditorium postponed to Oct. 19 a scheduled Thursday-night concert by husband-and-wife pianists Misha and Cipa Dichter. The building sustained “cosmetic damage but no evident structural damage,” said Michael Snyder, Ambassador director of public affairs.

Thursday’s matinee performance of “The Best Man,” in previews at the Ahmanson, was canceled. The evening show was performed however, as was “Babbitt,” at the Taper.

Thursday night’s performance of “Pedro Paramo” at the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts was also canceled, but no structural damage was reported at that venue. The Rio Hondo Symphony also canceled its concert featuring violinist Sheryl Staples and violist Elisa Barston, scheduled for Sunday at Whittier High School, because the auditorium there is “unusable,” a spokesman said. A new date for the concert will be announced.

The kinetic neon and plastic artwork destroyed at the Museum of Neon Art “was the centerpiece of our ‘Cow Cow Boogie’ exhibit,” said Mary Carter, curator at the small downtown museum, which closed Thursday and Friday and is slated to reopen today. “But it’s not a pile of glass down here.”

Los Angeles’ oldest art institution, the Southwest Museum, seemed to have sustained the most damage of any local visual art institute. However, even that building, built in 1914, suffered only minimal damage, both structurally and to its collection of about 500,000 Native American and Spanish colonial materials.

“We did have some minor damage to some artifacts,” said Steven LeBlanc, curator of archeology. About eight clay pots on display in the museum were broken, he said, “there are also some structural cracks in the building, some loosened paint and the usual bookshelves falling over.”

About three dozen prehistoric Southwest pots in the museum’s storage tower “were either chipped or broken,” added spokeswoman Carol Selkin.

“Given how close we were (to the quake’s south Rosemead epicenter, about 20 miles away) and the age of the building, we think we did pretty well,” LeBlanc said.

The Southwest Museum closed Thursday and Friday to allow officials to fully assess damage, and plans to open today, Selkin said.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino and the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena shut down Thursday only. The downtown Japan American Cultural and Community Center, which encompasses an art gallery, theater and community center, also closed Thursday. The Japan America Theatre and the community center reopened Friday and the gallery was scheduled to reopen today.

The Museum of Contemporary Art--at both its Temporary Contemporary site in Little Tokyo and its permanent site on Bunker Hill--closed Thursday and Friday and planned to reopen today. The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena also closed Thursday and Friday. A spokeswoman said she did not know if that museum would reopen today and suggested patrons call for information. Spokesmen at all these institutions reported minimal or no damage to artworks and only minimal, if any, structural damage.

Among those museums that remained open Thursday--and reporting no damage to artworks or to buildings--were the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, the Laguna Art Museum, the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Newport Harbor Art Museum in Newport Beach, the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and UCLA’s Frederick S. Wight Art Galleries (which includes the university’s Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden).

Officials at various other local performing-art sites reported little structural damage.

The Los Angeles Theatre Center downtown staged “Sarcophagus,” its scheduled Thursday-night presentation, and reported no structural damage, a theater spokeswoman said.

Thursday’s performance of “Mahabharata,” the nine-hour epic presented as part of the just-ended Los Angeles Festival at Paramount Studios, was performed as scheduled, said a festival spokesman.

Officials at several pop music venues, including the Universal Amphitheatre, the Forum in Inglewood, the Pacific Amphitheatre, the Greek Theater and the Palace in Hollywood reported little damage--beyond broken cocktail glasses at Club Lingerie--and reported no canceled Thursday-night performances.

Contributors: Sylvie Drake, Daniel Cariaga, John Henken, Richard Cromelin, Don Shirley.