A ‘Nutcracker’ Set in East L.A.

The 41st Annual Los Angeles County Holiday Celebration kicks off Sunday at 3 p.m. atthe Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The family-friendly spectacular features six hours of seasonally themed entertainment in the forms of big-band swing, gospel and mariachi music, ballet, carols, Hanukkah songs, taiko drumming and salsa.

Among the groups performing is Johnny Polanco y Su Conjunto Amistad and the L.A. Salsa Kids, the Long Beach Ballet, the Salvation Army Tabernacle Children’s Choir, the Sinai Akiba Academy Choir, the Sierra Park Elementary School Folklorico, Opera California, the Los Angeles Chinese Chorale, Gospel Philippines Chorale, the State Street Ballet, Vox Femina Los Angeles and the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles.

Gema Sandoval, the artistic director and choreographer of the Whittier-based Danza Floricanto/USA, has given up counting just how many times her group has participated in the annual celebration.

This year, Danza Floricanto/USA in association with the Club Libertad de Los Angeles and Mi Linda Nicaragua, will give “The Nutcracker” a Latino sensibility. “El Sueno de Clarita” finds Clara dreaming about Christmas Eve in her house in East L.A. Instead of the toys being from Europe and Asia, they are from Nicaragua, Peru and Mexico.

Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, Danza Floricanto/USA has toured throughout the American Southwest, the Pacific Northwest and Mexico. Sandoval and her troupe are the recipients of the 1994 and 1995 Lester Horton awards for staging traditional dance.

Sandoval talked about the magic of the Holiday Celebration and her new version of “The Nutcracker.”

Question: What makes the Holiday Celebration so special for you and the Danza Floricanto/USA?

Answer: The mood from the very beginning is very festive. You really get a sense of the holiday. So that is a part of it. The other thing is you know that you as an artist are going to be sharing your art form with all Los Angeles. From an artistic point of view, you get to perform at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and your family gets to go see you. Then, of course, we all try to run home and make tamales. So it becomes part of a tradition in some ways.

It’s a wonderful way of discovering one’s neighborhoods without really having to go there. I think that there are so very few things in L.A. we can do together these days because it’s getting harder and harder to get across town.

Q: Would you discuss your program this year?

A: It’s the last portion of “The Nutcracker”--Clara’s dream when the various toys come to life.

What I thought was that basically I would change the place but the theme would be the same. I invited several Latino communities to participate so the dancing would be beautiful and authentic, and you wouldn’t lose the concept of a child’s dream of toys. When we think about it, our outward demonstrations are different, but we are human beings, all of us, with very similar ways of celebrating.

Q: How long does your “Nutcracker” performance last?

A: We have 10 minutes. It’s a fairly pristine, sparse kind of thing. We have costumes, of course. My mariachis, Mexicapan, are playing a real beautiful song that’s called “My City.” So I thought it was appropriate to share this with my city. That’s why I chose the melody. I think the concept will be understood because it is so universal.

One of the things I think the Los Angeles County Arts Commission has done not only for my company, but for a lot of the arts in the city, is that it’s given us a little cushion so that we dare to do things that we would not do if we only had one gig a year. So it really has fostered the arts, in addition to giving this great gift to the city. [The holiday festival] has really become a way in which the arts are still alive during the holidays, which is not always the case.

Q: What’s in store for your troupe in 2001?

A: We are currently celebrating our 25th anniversary, so we are going to be doing the final part of the celebration at the Luckman Fine Arts complex [at Cal State L.A.] the first weekend in June. Then we have just about finished developing a Day of the Dead celebration with dance. We are going to be doing that at El Camino College in November, and then we have little touring things here and there.

* The 41st Annual Los Angeles County Holiday Celebration takes place Sunday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center in downtown L.A. from 3-9 p.m. Admission is free. Doors open at 2:30 p.m. Information is available at (213) 972-3099 or through https://www.lacountyarts.org. The celebration also is televised on KCET-TV.