VENTURA : Parade to Highlight Day of the Dead Fete

Forget trick-or-treating. On Nov. 1--the day after Halloween--Ventura’s most colorful skeletons will go on parade to celebrate El Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.

The parade will be followed by dancing and theater performances at the Livery Arts Center on Palm Street.

“It’s not macabre but loving, respecting and evoking the memory of the dead,” said Cindy Zimmerman of the Ventura Arts Council, one of the sponsors of the event.

Costumes tend to be more clownish than ghoulish, Zimmerman said, and traditionally poke fun at such living targets as politicians, shop owners and neighbors.

For those who are mortified that they don’t have a thing to wear, the council is sponsoring workshops Saturday and on the afternoon of the festival.

Hosted by Javier Gomez, artistic director of the festival, the workshops will teach adults and children how to make masks and costumes in the Mexican tradition of the holiday, Zimmerman said.

The free workshops are at the Westpark Recreation Center, 450 W. Harrison St., from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and from 3 to 5 p.m. on Nov. 1.

A costume can be a simple as a black sweat shirt with a skeleton painted on it or as complicated as a skeleton mask topped by a Carmen Miranda-type hat of fruit, Zimmerman said.

The parade begins at 6 p.m. on Nov. 1 at the Westpark Recreation Center and will end at the Livery Arts Center. There will be theatrical performances, and Aztec and folklorico dancing beginning at 6:45.

“We’ll stop by a Chumash cemetery and attempt to wake them up and invite them to join us,” Zimmerman said.

Related events include an exhibition of altars--memorials created in honor of loved ones and filled with flowers, candles, photos and offerings of favorite foods--at the Momentum Gallery, 34 N. Palm St. The exhibit’s opening will be Oct. 30 from 5 to 7 p.m., followed by an auction of masks.