Paris Theme Marks Gala for Gaslamp : SAN DIEGO COUNTY

The Gaslamp Quarter Foundation commemorated the bicentennial of the French Revolution on Saturday by staging a celebration of 20th-Century American music and dance.

Re-creating the storming of the Bastille, after all, would have been difficult to manage, especially in the ballroom of the Omni hotel--just picking up all those discarded knitting needles would have been a nightmare for the housekeeping staff. Party planners opted instead to name the event “An American in Paris,” and the 325 guests galloped through its myriad entertainments with a glee that bordered on the Gallic.

Event co-chairmen Kay Carter and Judith Leitner said that, since the Gaslamp Quarter is a historical district, the foundation has decided that its fund-raisers should have historical relevance; the French theme seemed a natural because the 200th anniversary of the first Bastille Day, then known simply as July 16th, is at hand. (At the end of the evening, departing guests were given fortune cookies predicting a Chinese celebration in 1990 that will mark the approximate centennial of the founding of the Gaslamp District. The theme will reflect the role played by the Chinese community in the development of that part of San Diego.)

A French Feeling

Bastille Day itself had little to do with the mood of “An American in Paris,” which instead looked to the Paris of the 1920s, the period in which George Gershwin set his composition of the same name. In their effort to devise a soiree that would be frenetically French, Carter and Leitner did in fact contrive an evening that was tres jolie , tres chic and tres pommes frites , replete with whooping can-can dancers, a sultry torch singer who growled out steamy love complaints and a hallway filled with sidewalk artists.

By partitioning the Omni ballroom into three smaller rooms and taking advantage of ante-rooms and foyers, “An American in Paris” offerred a series of Parisian venues. A casino shared one space with a reasonably Gallic buffet, and neighbored a second salon to which the more energetic danced to Gershwin and le jazz hot . The most unusual attractions took place in a third room, in which the Stage 7 dancers performed a brief, specially commissioned ballet set to the music of “An American in Paris.”

This was followed by a 15-minute clip of the climactic dance sequence performed by Gene Kelly et al. in the film version of the Gershwin classic, and it was nothing short of astonishing to watch 200 formally dressed guests sit in rapt attention watching a film while, just outdoors, a full-blown party gathered steam.

Many Gaslamp Quarter art galleries exhibited portions of their current collections, and for those inclined to play with paints, there was a large canvas donated and partly painted by artist Francoise Gilot upon which the budding artists could daub their own impressions of the evening. As the canvas blossomed with flowers, butterflies, hot red lips and portentous squiggles, observers became aware that this was participatory art at its finest, more or less.

Gaslamp Quarter Foundation chairman Marlee Ehrenfeld said that the event dramatized the foundation’s emphasis upon historical preservation.

“ ‘An American in Paris’ works in two ways,” she said. “Obviously, it helps us to raise the funds we need, but we also need to gain some validity and prove that we can make history alive and interesting.”

Guests concluded the evening with an auction of bricks (these, of course, would have been appropriate for a Bastille Day re-enactment), one autographed by Muhammad Ali and others by members of city government. Purchasers’ names will be engraved on bricks in the pocket park that borders the historic William Heath Davis house in the heart of the Gaslamp Quarter.

The guest list included Bill and Amy Barnett, Don and Karen Cohn, Jack and Loraine McDonald, Judith Harris with Robert Singer, Irwin and Joan Jacobs, Pam Hamilton with Jim Lester, Robert and Isabelle Morris, Donald and Martha Chatelain, Stephan and Teresa Donche, and Michelle du Prel de Chapois.

Cynthia Barrett-Porter, assistant director of the rather handsome new Price Student Center on the UC-San Diego campus, pointed to the arrangements of Gerbera daisies and pastel carnations that adorned the tables in her dining room and said, “I never expected to see these here, but they look nice.”

Barrett-Porter’s surprise was understandable, since the flowers were arranged in bedpans. This little gesture was just part of the silliness that infected Medical Mania, a fund-raiser Saturday for 150 guests, given by the School of Medicine Associates to benefit the UCSD School of Medicine.

Described by chairman Priscilla Moxley as “the antidote for conventionality,” Medical Mania costumed its guests in blue paper surgical gowns, invited them to dance to a band called Dr. Feelgood and the Interns of Love, and offered them a health conscious menu followed by what Moxley called “a pure pig-out dessert”--tubs of ice cream drenched with toppings and served up in a child’s wading pool.

“The idea was to have everyone leave their Adolfo gowns and black tie at home and let us supply the attire,” said Moxley, who like all her guests had pinned a blue paper smock over her casual clothes. “This is a gala with congeniality.”

In perhaps the greatest departure from convention, nine doctors gave free medical advice during the cocktail hour on topics ranging from blood pressure to the joys of plastic surgery.

The committee included Penny Alexander, Sally Ashburn, Lois Dechant, Nancy McCall, Shirley Rubel, Joan Ward and Bert Wiederholt.

Friday’s San Diego Oceans ’89 gala, given at Sea World by the San Diego Oceans Foundation, also celebrated silliness as one of its main themes.

The 450 guests were handed Frisbees upon arrival and were invited to the Cap’n Kid’s Boardwalk Games amusement area to toss rings at bottles (if a ring landed on a red bottle, one could win a trip to London), and to play the fascinating Mr. Frog game, in which players attempted to flip rubber frogs onto plastic lilies. Fully 2 1/2 hours were devoted to these and similar amusements.

There was to have been a sky-diving performance in the middle of the cocktail reception, but the FAA canceled the dive because of low cloud cover.

The annual event raises funds for marine research and conservation. This year, $10,000 of the proceeds were earmarked as a grant to the Sea World Research Institute for its marine mammal program, which is attempting to help resolve the competition for natural resources along the California coast between seals, sea lions and humans.

The formal dinner, given in the City Streets area, was highlighted by the presentation of the Roger Revelle Perpetual Award, for research in the area of ocean stewardship, to Edward Goldberg of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. An auction of marine-oriented adventures and items followed; the choicest of the lot was the chance to stage a mock America’s Cup race between the Stars and Stripes ’86 and the America II, both 12-meter racing yachts.

Vangie Burt and Bill DeLeeuw co-chaired the event.