Performance Kaleidoscope on the Green : ‘Deep Thaw’ Piece Will Be Among Scores of Free Entertainment Bits

The idea for “Deep Thaw” came to dancer-choreographer Nancy Lanier years before she knew that the work would have its debut at Sunday’s sixth annual Arts on the Green in Costa Mesa. Nevertheless, the theme of the seven-minute piece is surprisingly similar to the one behind the free, daylong cultural celebration.

The dance, like a spring thaw, “is nonstop motion from beginning to end,” said Lanier, a member of the Lewitzky Dance Company in Los Angeles.

And Arts on the Green, offering presentations by 56 Orange County dance, music and theater groups and exhibits by more than 70 visual artists at Town Center Park in Costa Mesa, is being described as a day of “continuous creativity.” It runs Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“You can basically go from 11 in the morning to 6 at night, and there is something going on every single minute,” said Carol Heywood, chairwoman of the arts committee for the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce, producer of the event.

Groups large and small, as well as soloists, will perform on nine stages scattered through Town Center. The event is expected to draw 10,000 visitors, making it the largest festival to date, organizers said. Last year, about 8,000 people attended.

Musical offerings range from jazz to folk to classical and include performances by Opera Pacific, harpist Kathy Kavanaugh and a retrospective of ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll presented by the Hop nightclub in El Toro.

Among theater groups scheduled are the Stop-Gap drama-therapy troupe, the Alternative Repertory Theatre and the Grove Shakespeare Festival. Ethnic dance--including Polynesian, Japanese, Scottish and Spanish styles--will be included, in addition to ballet, tap and modern dance.

The festival, organized by the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce, has a $60,000 budget, including $20,000 from Costa Mesa plus contributions from city businesses. Hands-on arts activities for children will also be offered.

“Attending arts events can be fairly expensive,” Heywood said. “So once a year, the community can come and spend a day availing themselves--for free--of many of the county’s arts organizations.”

“Deep Thaw,” commissioned by the Tustin-based Dance Kaleidoscope of Orange County, will be performed by six members of that 14-year-old company at 5:15 p.m. It uses an original score composed in 1985 by San Francisco composer Gregory Ballard, whose “energetic piano and electronic” music prompted the piece, said Lanier, who lives in Los Angeles.

“I wanted to work with a flow of movement that was imitative of a spring thaw that eddied and flowed and changed its course and just kept going from start to finish,” she said. “Physically, the dance has that kind of energy and power, but at the same time (the idea of) water allows you to yield and take the path of least resistance, and that is also evident in the choreography.

Explaining the reason for the work’s unusual brevity, she said, “I think the point comes across in that amount of time.”

Another reason it is so short, she said, is because the dance is so “high energy” that the dancers had enough stamina to last just seven minutes.

Lanier, 32, who joined the Lewitzky troupe in 1983, said she has concentrated on performing rather than choreographing since then. Previously, she crafted dances in Utah and Michigan, where she received undergraduate and graduate degrees, respectively, in dance.

She likes the idea of presenting her new work in the informal, outdoor arena of Arts on the Green: “When you first put a work out, you usually want to go back and make some changes and see how people react to it. So this is a great testing ground.”

The free sixth annual Arts on the Green runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday at various locations Town Center Park, Costa Mesa. Information: (714) 650-1490.