Festival Finds Ethnics--But Not Easily

When producers began to mount this Saturday’s International Music and Dance Festival at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, they ran into a few problems.

“Only certain countries have ethnic dance troupes here (in the county),” co-producer Ruth Ding said recently. “We are really limited to what is available to us. . . . The county is very strong in certain groups. In others, there is nothing. . . .

“I went to San Francisco and called New York to get Italian groups, but (with) no luck. German troupes (also) were very hard to find.”

The idea, said co-producer Thomas N. Moon, was “to pay tribute to all the ethnic groups that have made Orange County what it is. We wanted to represent something unique and beautiful that had never been done in Orange County before.”

Ding added: “When you try to present the whole world in one night, it is not an easy task. We will try to cover seven continents.”

The Festival will actually start outside the vaulted Segerstrom arch on Saturday at 7:15 p.m. with a Chinese Lion Dance on the ground level and Scottish bagpipers on the second level.

Inside, at 8 p.m., more than a dozen countries and cultures will be represented, including southern India, Mexico, China, Spain, Armenia, Korea, Polynesia, the Congo and Austria. Additionally, the Master Chorale of Orange County, the Chapman Symphony and the Santa Ana Winds will be part of the festivities, which are part of the Orange County Centennial.

“When we heard about the centennial, I felt (it was) a wonderful opportunity to thank all the people in Orange County, especially the ethnic groups,” Ding said. “It is the ethnic contribution to the county that made this county so outstanding and rich.”

The two producers solved the scarcity problem by bringing in several troupes from outside the county. But with such an ambitious program in mind, they decided that the groups would have only a short time to perform.

“Asking an ethnic group, anywhere, to do only two to six minutes, most turn you down,” Ding said. “That’s the time limit I gave them. I didn’t want to be there all night. . . . They all agreed. It has to be that short.”

The event is a fund-raiser by the 52-member Directors Emeritus Group of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, made up of the former members of the Center’s board. “Naturally, we want to continue supporting the Center even though we’re not active on the board,” said Moon, who is chairman of the emeritus board. This is its first fund-raiser.

Moon said that 32 groups expressed interest in the festival.

“Some of them were from out of the country,” he said. “(But) we didn’t have the budget to bring them here. The African group (Fua Dia Congo) happened to be in the county.”

The budget for the event is about $62,000, Moon said, raised from private individuals with some additional corporate support. After expenses, the remaining money will be split equally between the Center and the Protocol Foundation of Orange County, which funds the county Protocol Office.

The Protocol Foundation is involved, Moon said, because official representatives from 40 countries are expected to attend the event.

The groups accepted were reviewed and passed on by a representative committee, according to Moon.

One byproduct of the festival was to give small groups their first chance to perform in the Center, according to the producers.

“I know lots of groups never set foot in the Center (though they) would like to,” Ding said. “A small company like the Korean Company, which has been around for a long time and has done a lot of work in California--for them to rent the hall for a concert is out of the question.”

One of those groups--the Santa Ana Winds--might seem to have a certain claim on the Center.

“The Santa Ana Winds was one of the early donors” to the Center, Ding said. “They came up with the money to be one of the founders--at $1,000--when we asked for money on hope alone. We had no site or anything. They gave us the money with the hope they would have a chance to perform at such a nice auditorium. They never have, although they were asked to perform outside the building.”

Robert Ward, the ensemble’s founding artistic director, recalled giving the money in the mid-1970s.

“The hope was that some of the local organizations might be able to use the facility to rehearse in,” Ward said. “But that is a far-off dream. No one gets in that building without money. We haven’t been able to use it for anything. We haven’t even asked.”

Still, Ward said his group, composed of 100 musicians ages 14 to 21, has played outside the building on several occasions, most recently at the benefit for the Center Guilds of “Strike Up the Band.” Therefore, Ward said, the group is “very excited” to get to play inside the Center for the first time.

Rosie Pena, artistic director of the Santa Ana-based Mexican folkloric company Relampago del Cielo, is also excited about playing there.

The Center “is just totally not available to the (small) local groups such as we are. It’s only available to the national (dance) companies,” said Pena, whose troupe will offer a potpourri of dances from the state of Jalisco.

Moon and Ding hope to make the festival an annual event and to have even more local groups participate next year.

The International Music and Dance Festival will begin at 8 p.m. on Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa. Tickets: $10-$30. Information: (714) 740-2000; (213) 480-3232.