Artists Assured Role in L.A. Fest, Sellars Says

There is “no question” that Orange County artists will take part in September’s Los Angeles Festival, according to its director, Peter Sellars.

Sellars is expected to announce in February which artists and groups will participate in the three-week festival, which will feature arts of the Pacific Rim.

In an interview Wednesday, after he met with a group of local developers to advise them on public art, Sellars said that some of the country’s “most important master artists” practicing traditional art forms from Southeast Asia, for instance, live in Orange County.

He added that the mainstream Orange County arts community would benefit by greater exposure to the cultures of the area’s large and varied ethnic populations, Southeast Asia and Latin America in particular.

“It is work that is just as interesting and profound and not any more distant from the life of an average Californian than the Kirov Ballet,” he said, referring to the Russian troupe that recently danced at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Festival organizers recently reported that painter Edwin Harris of Anaheim, the newly established Irvine Dance Theatre and the Arpana Indian Dance Company of Irvine have expressed interest in the “open” portion of the festival, in which participants pay their own production costs.