Stomp Pays Price for Truncated Show

Stomp, the world-renowned percussion troupe, has paid the Orange County Performing Arts Center $21,000 to compensate it for a truncated educational program the performers staged last week, center and Stomp officials said Tuesday.

About 3,000 schoolchildren and others were surprised and “very disappointed” by the brief program, said Bernie Jones, fine arts coordinator for the Garden Grove Unified School District.

“I had calls from every one of [the district’s eight] principles by the time I got back to the office,” Jones said. “I didn’t get calls from parents, but I know other people did.”

The problem occurred last Wednesday, when students from 27 Orange County middle schools arrived at the Costa Mesa arts facility expecting an hourlong program. Instead, the Stomp troupe performed for 10 minutes and answered questions for another 15.

A spokeswoman for the troupe blamed the shortened program on a “miscommunication” within the Stomp organization. Center officials said they had given Stomp all the details of last week’s program in writing in advance.

Stomp, which gave eight public performances at the center’s Segerstrom Hall last week, “feels terrible” about the mistake, tour representative Tanya Grubich said.

Grubich said the eight performers had expected only about 200 students. And when they sensed that the far larger group was becoming restless during the question-and-answer session, “they cut out the part where they bring 10 kids on stage [for audience participation] because they felt the others would be bored,” she said.

“Unfortunately, the performers didn’t have the correct information. They walked into a situation they weren’t prepared for.”

Stomp’s $21,000 payment will cover the cost of last Wednesday’s educational program, center spokesman Greg Patterson said. Much of the money will be forwarded to the schools to pay the cost of busing the students. A portion will be used to underwrite an educational program planned for the center in April as restitution for the snafu, Patterson said.

Grubich said Stomp may participate in that program or may further compensate schools with free Stomp videos. The troupe also plans to write letters of apology to the schools, she said.

The Stomp program is one of about five such educational “On Stage” efforts the center offers schoolchildren annually, Patterson said. It has provided about 300,000 elementary and secondary students with a variety of outreach efforts for the last 13 years.

“This has never happened before,” Patterson said. “It’s a little blip on a screen [within the context of] years of good experiences with our education program.”

But he credited Stomp for being “quite cooperative in working with us to find a solution to the problem.”