Children’s Festival to Highlight Dance

Performances by a touring ensemble of the Nikolais/Louis Foundation for Dance and the Los Angeles Chamber Ballet will highlight the fifth annual Imagination Celebration, a visual and performing arts festival geared for children that will run April 21 through 29 throughout Orange County.

The festival, presented by the Orange County Performing Arts Center and the Orange County Department of Education, will feature performances, exhibitions and hands-on workshops at schools, libraries, malls, museums and the Center. More than 30 local educational and arts organizations will take part. Most events are free; ticketed events are priced from $5 to $35.

Among festival highlights exclusively for schoolchildren are April 23 through 25 performances in the Center’s 300-seat Founders Hall of Alwin Nikolais’ “The Crystal and the Sphere” by the Nikolais/Louis Foundation for Dance. The foundation is an umbrella organization that includes the New York-based Nikolais and Murray Louis Dance Company. On April 24, the Los Angeles Chamber Ballet will dance “The Little Prince” for schoolchildren in the 3,000-seat Segerstrom Hall.

Features for children and their parents include an April 21 concert by the Pacific Symphony and “Imaginarium,” which will transform the Center’s rear parking lot into a free, hands-on arts playground. A wide range of other public events, many of them free, will take place at such sites as the Bowers Museum, Newport Harbor Art Museum and the Children’s Museum at La Habra.

School classrooms will be the venues for the Orange County Opera (a six-member group that tours local schools), works from the Laguna Art Museum and other offerings. Bob McGrath of “Sesame Street” will be host for the festival’s April 29 finale show.

The Imagination Celebration is a production of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. For information, call (714) 556-2787, Ext. 885.