‘Quirky’ Teaches Lessons in Getting Along With Others

A demonstration downtown in the aftermath of the violence earlier this year cut short the DanceQuirks Movement Theater’s appearance at the Los Angeles Children’s Museum--and its timely “let’s get along” message.

The troupe was invited back and will perform the same show, “Quirky and Company,” today and Sunday, twice each day, in the museum’s Louis B. Mayer Performance Space.

DanceQuirks artistic director Linda Lawrence, who describes the show as a combination of creative movement and theater, said “the basis of the story is how people learn to get along with each other despite their differences and then learn they’re not so different after all.”

Lawrence and her company use word games and “a lot of alliteration” to put across the show’s message of understanding.

Some of the characters learning to get along are Quirky, who has a penchant for words that start with q ; Happy, who hops; Gosh, who gallops, and a superstar wanna-be named Sally Steps. The audience gets involved by guessing answers, providing sound effects and, in the finale, children are chosen at random to participate on stage.

Lawrence, 29, a former dance specialist at Crossroads Elementary School in Santa Monica with a background in dance education, formed the seven-member DanceQuirks at the beginning of this year to give children “an alternative, fun way of learning.”

Her company, made up of performers in their 20s and 30s, consists of Matt Goodman, David Huffman, Judith Williams, Eric Sustin, Laurie Young and Susan Zocoli, the musician who supplies live accompaniment.

DanceQuirks recently received a $1,000 grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department’s Arts Recovery Fund. The company will use the grant to “do three shows in the South-Central area at after-school programs at Van Ness Park, the Westminister Neighborhood Assn. and the YMCA in the Crenshaw district,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence hopes that along with the show’s basic message, children will “walk away with a sense that learning doesn’t always mean sitting down with a pencil and paper, that you can learn in many different, exciting ways.”

“Quirky and Company,” Los Angeles Children’s Museum, 310 N. Main St., today and Sunday, noon and 2 p.m. Free with $5 museum admission; no charge for children under age 2; (213) 687-8800.

This Little Piggy: Making the transition from children’s book to British television to home video comes Huxley Pig. Created by author-illustrator Rodney Peppe, and reproduced here in model animation, Huxley and his eccentric friends are watchable as much for their unique charm as for the sly bits of humor threaded through each simple adventure.

A top-quality film from BFS Video in Canada, “Huxley Pig: The Sea Monster,” includes five separate stories, each beginning when Huxley daydreams.

A chef’s uniform leads to a restaurant fiasco, where the head waiter is a vampire pig named Vile Vincent--”one mock turtle soup for the rodent gentleman,” he intones.

For an ocean adventure, Huxley dons a sailor suit and makes a boat out of his blue four-poster, encountering “mer-pigs” and a green sea monster with the face of a wart hog. Huxley disarms the monster with bad jokes and cheese and tomato sandwiches. In other beguiling adventures, Huxley is a magician, an airplane pilot and an ace crime reporter.

“Huxley Pig, The Sea Monster,” BFS Video, 50 minutes, $14.98; (800) 268-3891.