California Institute Of The Arts

The California Institute of the Arts will officially rename its school of dance after the late philanthropist Sharon Disney Lund, Walt Disney's younger daughter, during the school's dance performance at Disney Hall's REDCAT on Saturday. Lund, a CalArts board member who died in 1993, was one of the school's most generous benefactors, contributing $28 million during her lifetime and through her foundation after her death.

Kathy Carbone remembers the twinge of trepidation she felt when she was asked to help create a library in the tiny, east-central African nation of Rwanda. "Oh my God, what have I just signed up for?" she recently said, recalling her initial reaction. "I felt overwhelmed. I had never created a library." Carbone, the performing arts librarian at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, realized she faced an enormous task.

A controversial art exhibit of the American flag at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia closed Tuesday, the victim of protests and vandalism by people within the school and residents of surrounding communities. The exhibit featured a flag draped across the floor and was meant as a show of support for a similar art display that raised ire in Chicago.

Five artists described as "wildly independent experimenters" were announced Sunday as winners of this year's Alpert Award in the Arts. The award bestows a $75,000 cash prize and a one-week teaching residency at CalArts in Valencia.

The California Institute of the Arts officially reopened its campus Friday after the completion of almost $30 million in earthquake repairs. Construction crews finished work in time for the beginning of the fall academic term last week, and a celebration was held Friday to mark the reopening and 25th anniversary of the art school, founded by Walt Disney. "It's been done in a phenomenal period of time," spokeswoman Anita Bonnell said.

Thanks to a $20,000 grant from Union Bank, 15 Belmont High School students will participate in a four-week residential arts program at the California Institute of the Arts, bank officials said Monday. The Belmont students were among 500 young aspiring artists selected in a statewide talent search. The program offers instruction in animation, creative writing, dance, film and video, music, theater and visual arts. The program will begin Saturday at CalArts' campus in Valencia.

California Institute of the Arts, the Valencia college heavily damaged during the Northridge earthquake, has been awarded almost $25 million in federal funds for repairs, officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency said. FEMA spokesman Russ Edmonston said the private arts college has been authorized to receive more than $24.9 million to rebuild earthquake-damaged structures.

California Institute of the Arts is a haven for music, dance and art festivals, especially in the spring, when activity increases on the Valencia campus. This week brings six concerts in the "Musical Explorations 2001" series, which is actually spread over the academic year. But a festival by any other name is still as sweet. What else can you call a clutch of six concerts liberally covering musical traditions from Bali, Java, North India and West Africa?

CalArts has named New York-based curator and writer Eungie Joo director of the 3,000-square-foot gallery at REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater. Joo, 34, who recently curated shows at New York's Deitch Projects and Hartford, Conn.'s Real Art Ways, is teaching two classes at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. She earned a doctorate at UC Berkeley in ethnic studies.

California Institute of the Arts, which was heavily damaged during the Northridge earthquake, has been awarded almost $25 million in federal funds for repairs, officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency confirmed Wednesday. FEMA Director James Lee Witt and Sen. Dianne Feinstein are scheduled to tour the 60-acre campus at 2 p.m. today to view ongoing earthquake repair efforts.

"You are probably wondering why I am up here," artist Faith Wilding said, taking her turn on a panel discussion about "Third Wave Feminisms" Saturday afternoon at CalArts. "When I was invited, I said I didn't want to be on the history panel. I'm tired of being on the history panel. The feminist project is not over. I've been teaching feminism for the last 30 years and our work is still so much at the beginning, in so many ways. I'm on the endless wave, that's all I can say."

They used to say: "Go West, young man." These days, the cry might be amended to: "Go West, experimental artist of any age" -- at least, if what's happening at CalArts' Center for New Performance is an indication. Director-designer Richard Foreman, an inveterate fixture of Manhattan's avant garde theater scene, and Michael Gordon, the composer best known as a co-founder of contemporary art music's Bang on a Can Festival, have made their way to L.A. for their first collaboration.

BEFORE he dreamed up "SpongeBob SquarePants," his character who would tickle the fancy of the nation's toddlers, Stephen Hillenburg was ruminating about Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

Gabriel Jimenez-Torres, a 13-year-old middle school student and basketball fanatic, knew little about Rodney G. King before last October. In fact, he searched Google Images to get a look at King's face. "I had to do a lot of research," said Gabriel, who hadn't been born when King was beaten in 1991 by four white Los Angeles Police Department officers whose acquittals led to riots in 1992.

To exuberant bursts of music by Zoltan Kodaly, waves of CalArts dancers cross and recross a rehearsal studio under the watchful eye of Carla Maxwell, artistic director of the Jose Limon Dance Company. Maxwell is looking for students to join the troupe for three weeks to prepare for a revival of Limon's 1958 "Missa Brevis," this weekend at the Ahmanson Theatre. The company has 13 dancers; the piece requires 22. Maxwell isn't necessarily looking for a perfect Limon dancer.

OF the many words used to describe playwright Erik Ehn -- aesthete, mystic, anarchist, collectivist and, certainly, radical -- there's one few would have thought of until now: college administrator. Best known as the author of highly literate fantasias of language and spirituality barely contained by the word "play" as well as founder of the underground RAT theater movement, Ehn took over as dean of California Institute of the Arts' School of Theater in July.

Steven D. Lavine, associate director for arts and humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation, has been named successor to Robert J. Fitzpatrick as president of the California Institute of the Arts. The appointment was announced Tuesday by Jon B. Lovelace, chairman of the Valencia institution's board of trustees. Lavine, who holds a doctorate in English and American literature from Harvard University, will assume the post in late June.

On long tables, students at California Institute of the Arts laid out their best drawings and artwork, hoping to catch the eyes of future employers. Just a few years ago, they could expect to land high-paying, salaried jobs as animators at major Hollywood studios. But not anymore. These students are more likely to end up designing Web sites, and it may be on only a freelance basis.

You might not expect to hear African drums rumbling through the Latino neighborhoods of East Los Angeles. But then you visit Monterey High School. Inside a small classroom, 11 students are thumping and slapping wooden drums -- a booming performance so powerful the chairs and floor vibrate. "That's great," instructor Chris Armstrong bellows as the group bangs out an intricate West African dance called Manjani. "That's the fast version. You guys hung in there."

It's a time for celebrations and farewells at the California Institute of the Arts. This week, students brought onto the stage of REDCAT downtown a multi-screen video display honoring a quarter-century of achievement by the CalArts Dance Ensemble. Meanwhile, the exhibit's artistic director, Cristyne Lawson, sat in the Disney Hall theater's green room speaking of her 27 years as dean of the CalArts school of dance -- a period about to end with her retirement.