Spirited Seniors Gotta Dance and Sing in Showcase : Entertainment: Finalists, some good and some not so good, will compete in the city show.

Warning to all participants in tomorrow’s 1990 Los Angeles Citywide Senior Talent Show: No matter how good you are, you’re going to get upstaged--by something called the indomitable human spirit.

“The amazing thing is they give 120%,” said Meyer Bernfield, president of the Los Angeles Federation Council of Senior Clubs. “They do their bit, and some are really excellent. Some are mediocre, but no matter what, they do it with fervor, and they love it.”

All that fervor and 120%-effort will be on stage tomorrow beginning at 1 p.m. at Fairfax High School Auditorium, 7850 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, when senior finalists from all over the city sing, dance, tell jokes, act and play music for a panel of six judges. The event, sponsored by the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks, will be co-hosted by Cesar Romero and Anne Jeffreys and emceed by Mario Machado.

A number of these 60 indomitable human spirits will represent senior groups in the San Fernando Valley, and a few of them spent some time talking about what is certainly their greatest talent--their ability to live active, full lives.

“I am going to dance the lambada sola! Meaning by myself,” said Clarita Kern, who gives her age as “late 60s.”

Wait a minute. How can one dance the lambada--the highly erotic forbidden dance-- sola? Isn’t that something like playing one-handed strip poker?

“Well, I use the same steps,” Kern said. “Of course, it’s nicer because when you have a partner, it looks more--oh, what’s the right word for it--well, suggestive. “

But isn’t the point of the dance to be suggestive?

“Yes,” Kern said, laughing. “Well, it’s still suggestive. I still use the same movements.”

Kern came to the United States from El Salvador 45 years ago, and taught dance for the Arthur Murray Studios in Portland, San Diego and Seattle. Married life slowed and eventually ended her dancing career in which she specialized in rumba, samba, bolero and that forbidden dance emeritus --the once-dreaded tango. “My husband doesn’t dance, so I put it aside,” she said.

Living in Encino in recent years, Kern took up dance again after a visit to the Reseda Resource Center for Seniors. From there it was just a few steps, so to speak, to the lambada--which she learned by watching dancers on television. Last year, she won first place in the talent show semifinals for a salsa dance, but was out of town during the finals. This year, she will compete.

“My grandchildren? They get a big kick out of grandma doing the lambada! They are used to seeing me move. They can see my spirit and my enthusiasm. You just change when you dance.”

And you lose weight--she says she’s back to her teen-age level of 105. Does Clarita Kern recommend the lambada for other seniors?

“Oh yes!” she said. “It’s good for the waistline.”

With or without a partner?

“Both. But oh, if they have a partner, it’s better! “

The members of Today’s Golden Dreams range in age from 62 to 94. Some have to walk an hour to get to rehearsal--instruments in hand.

“They are not professionals,” Violetta McHenry said. “They are just students who never had a chance to sing or play music, and finally now they are getting a chance.”

Today’s Golden Dreams is an orchestra of about 30 seniors who play instruments they have only begun to study in their senior years. For 16 years, McHenry has organized, taught and conducted the group at the Pacoima Senior Citizen Center.

“It’s wonderful for their lives and very encouraging for them,” said McHenry, a Mexico City-born musician who is decidedly not a senior--she gives her age as “in my 30s.” “Many of them have said they were very bitter and very depressed, and now they feel more fulfillment in their lives.”

Refugio Zamora is one. The guitarist, 94, couldn’t play a lick until he was about 84 and a beginning student in McHenry’s class.

Another is Lupe Gil, who, at 65, will sing “La Bamba” at tomorrow’s contest. “She sings very wonderfully,” McHenry said proudly. “She sings a solo, and that’s one of the things she’s wanted to do her whole life. In the beginning she was embarrassed. Now she does it so well.” McHenry said Gil will sing “Amor y Lagrimas” (“Love and Tears”). “Also, Lupe is now learning guitar. She has been playing maracas and tambourine for 50 years, and about three months ago, she came with the guitar. It’s so wonderful.”

Sal Consolo, 67, will sing “Rags to Riches” in a hobo outfit at tomorrow’s contest.

“There’s joy in my heart every day,” said Consolo, a retired North Hollywood postman who will represent Joslyn Senior Center in Burbank. “I sing in convalescent homes; I’ve been doing that for 30 to 40 years. I moved out here in 1946 with mom and pop, took care of them, never got married. . . . That’s all I do now--sing, and little acting.”

He keeps his hearty second-tenor voice in good repair, singing around the house, in hospitals, and acting with Serendipity Players, a senior drama group in North Hollywood.

Does he expect to come in first tomorrow?

No, he said, “I’m looking to be part of a unit that will make a good show and show friendship among all of us and a little bit of love that we all need.”

Nearly 70 years ago, at a Sisters of Mercy elementary school in the little Philippine town of Ilo Ilo, a little girl named Carmen Betita learned how to play a song called “Rosas y Perlas” (“Roses and Pearls”) on the piano.

Tomorrow at the talent show, that little girl--now 78--will sit at the piano and play it again.

“I stopped playing piano when I was 19 because I was preparing for my high school graduation, and there was a competition for valedictorian,” said Betita, who represents the Van Nuys Senior Citizen Center. “I wanted to compete for that position. If I continued playing piano, I would have no time for my books and grades, and I would not become valedictorian.”

Betita, who became a U.S. citizen in 1986, did indeed become class valedictorian, and her piano remained neglected for nearly half a century. A few years ago, while living with a friend who owned a piano, the Van Nuys woman sat down at the keyboard again and tried to remember.

“And I started thinking about it little by little, and to remember--little by little. Then I started remembering all those pieces I had learned when I was young. But without the books! I play everything by memory.

“I was playing ‘Rosas y Perlas’ and my friend said, ‘Oh that is “First Waltz” by Durand.’ I said, ‘No, that is “Rosas y Perlas.” ’ She opened a book and showed me it was really called ‘First Waltz.’

The piece became her husband’s favorite as well as her own. “I have a sentimental feeling for that piece because I learned it when I was 10 years old,” she said. “Rosas y Perlas”--uh, “First Waltz.”

Either way, that Sister of Mercy would be proud.

Jay Bernard doesn’t think he’s funny. It’s the things he says that are funny.

“I don’t call myself a funny comedian, I just tell things that are funny,” he said.

Bernard hasn’t always been a comic. In World War II, he flew P-40s in the 99th all-black fighter squadron, doing escort duty in North Africa and Sicily. Later, he flew supplies in and out of war-torn Korea and Vietnam.

Bernard, 70, a Van Nuys resident who left his lifelong home of Harlem about 10 years ago, retired as an air freight inspector nearly two years ago, but a sedentary life was far from his mind. A visit to a high school reunion that he said was “like going to a morgue” was additional impetus to “keep moving,” as he puts it. Since retiring, he has written a novel titled “The Last Bus to Freedom,” a political fantasy about Harlem becoming a separate nation, and has resurrected his stand-up routine (with appearances at the L.A. Cabaret).