Dancing, Food and Fun

This year’s theme for the annual Ventura County Greek Festival is “The Ancient Art of Having Fun.” For kids as well as adults, some of what’s going on Saturday and Sunday at Conejo Creek Park North in Thousand Oaks will seem not merely fun but big fun.

Take eating, for instance. There will be 30,000 handmade Greek pastries that will have to be consumed. Plus 8,000 gyro sandwiches, 3,000 Greek meatballs and 3,000 full Greek dinners. Heroic efforts will be required.

And only the gods know where anyone young or old will find the energy after such feasting to get up and join the hundreds who regularly participate in the Greek dancing on the huge dance floor at the festival.

Kids, at least, will have help from a few hearty adults, who will provide instruction for the uninitiated in this ancient art. There will also be inspiration available in the form of demonstrations of Greek dancing by a group of kids from the Ventura County Greek community--in costume. Two groups, “juniors,” from 4 to 6 years old, and “seniors,” from 7 to 12 years old, have been rehearsing for six months.

Further inspiration, of a sort, will be provided by the Walt Disney Co., which will have staff at the festival to pass out promotional goodies in connection with Disney’s latest animated feature film, “Hercules.”

Perhaps inspired by the story of Hercules, or another Greek super-hero depicted in NBC’s recent TV miniseries “The Odyssey,” organizers of this weekend’s festival will offer kids some novel interactive adventures.

A spokeswoman, Diane Rumbaugh, says there will be a labyrinth, also called a castle maze, that “requires kids to wind their way through the body of a giant caterpillar until they find their way out.”

There will be another chamber, she says, quite separate from the crawling-creature labyrinth, called the Balloon Typhoon, a space filled with hundreds of balloons where children can play.

What happens there, one suspects, will be grand fun for the children. Not so much fun for the balloons. Certainly our local kids can expect to fare better during their encounter with this tempest than did Odysseus and his crew when they ran into bad weather and novel challenges.

There will also be other amusements for kids, including a pair of inflatable trampolines called “jolly jumps” and a nine-hole miniature golf course.

While the kids play and stuff themselves with pastries called galataboureko, koulourakia and kourambiethes, parents can enjoy shopping for imported Greek gift items at various booths.

The festival--now in its 18th year (but only its second in the Conejo Valley)--last year drew a crowd of over 15,000. Food sold at the booths will be prepared and donated by volunteers from Ventura County’s Greek community. Proceeds from the festival support countywide charities.

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For Ventura County families who can’t get to Thousand Oaks this weekend, there will be another outdoor festival on the other side of the county. The Children’s International Arts Festival will be held Saturday at Mission Park in downtown Ventura. There will be food, craft workshops and entertainment representing Native American, Latin American, African American and Asian American cultures--as well as those of Israel and New England.

BE THERE

Ventura County Greek Festival, Sat., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Conejo Creek Park North, 1379 E. Janss Road, Thousand Oaks. Admission is $2 for adults, children under 12 free. (805) 482-1273. Children’s International Arts Festival, Sat., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Mission Park, Ventura. Entertainment and workshops free. (805) 658-4726.