GOINGS ON : Dancers Will Tap Into National Celebration : A variety of groups will perform heel-clicking numbers in Santa Barbara in honor of Bojangles’ birthday.

Today is the birth date of tap-dancing legend Bill (Bojangles) Robinson. That means it is also National Tap Dance Day, an occasion marked by the sound of heels clicking all across the country.

In Santa Barbara, dancers will gather at UC Santa Barbara’s Campbell Hall for a performance of tap in a variety of forms, including swing, the Charleston tap and electronic tap. Among the groups performing will be the Pure Joy Moving Company of Ventura and the Next Step of Thousand Oaks.

Show time is 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $12 general, $7 senior citizens and students. Call 893-3535 for information.

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Tibetan temple singing bowls and temple gongs of Burma and Bali will be among the instruments featured in a performance of meditative Tibetan music Friday at UCSB’s MultiCultural Center Theater. The concert will begin at 8 p.m. There will be no late seating. General admission is $5. Call 893-8411.

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Santa Barbara artists will paint the town red--actually, they’ll be drawing the town red (and a variety of other colors)--during the I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival on Saturday through Monday in front of the Santa Barbara Mission.

About 20,000 people are expected to turn out to watch the chalk artists re-create the street-painting tradition, which dates back to 16th-Century Italy. An Italian market with live music will be set up near the drawing area. Admission is free. The mission is at Los Olivos and Laguna streets.

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Big Mountain and Dennis Brown will be the headliners at the Sunsplash reggae concert Monday at the Santa Barbara Bowl. Among the acts scheduled to join them are the Wailing Souls, Sister Carol, Junior Tucker, the Skool Band and Christafari. Show time is 3 p.m. Tickets are $19, $23 and $30. Call 583-8700. The bowl is at 1122 N. Milpas St.

Friday’s Santana concert at the bowl is sold out.

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Robert Ornduff, director of the UC Berkeley Botanic Garden, will present a slide show and lecture on the “Plants and Gardens of Morocco” on Wednesday at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Ornduff, who recently completed his fifth trip to that country, will discuss the history, landscape and plants of the region. The program will begin at 2 p.m. Admission is $18 at the door. Call 962-4364, Ext. 327, for information. The museum is at 1130 State St.

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Illustrations of flora and fauna by such artists as John James Audubon, John Gould, James Bateman and Basilius Besler are on display at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History’s new John and Peggy Maximus Gallery.

The gallery, which opened last week, will house a collection of antique natural history works by European and American artists. Museum hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays and holidays. The museum is at 2559 Puesta del Sol Road.

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Santa Barbara’s Community Arts Music Assn., which each year lines up a tremendous selection of visiting orchestras to perform at the Arlington Theatre, has announced its schedule for 1995-96.

The organization’s 77th season will open Sept. 25 with the Hong Kong Philharmonic. Next, it will be the Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra (Oct. 21), followed by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic (Jan. 18), the Los Angeles Philharmonic (March 16), the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (March 30) and Dresden Staatskapelle (April 26).

All concerts begin at 8 p.m. Season tickets range from $104 to $265. Call 966-4324.

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ONGOING: Carpinteria’s Seaside Theatre Company will continue its run of “The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia,” a dark comedy about an outdated fraternal order in a small Texas town. The play is staged at the Carpinteria Arts & Lectures Center, 5141 Carpinteria Ave. Show times are 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, and 2 p.m. June 11. Tickets are $9. Call 684-6380.