California Institute Of The Arts

The proud parents of the CalArts Class of 1996 leaned back in their folding chairs, squinted through the desert sun and began their fashion critique. "Look, there's another one dressed like a dog," said an elderly woman, pointing to a young woman strutting across the balcony overlooking the school's music courtyard. The eclectic Class of 1996, the largest in the Valencia art institute's 26-year history, mostly shunned caps and gowns at its graduation Friday.

How prophetic was Aldous Huxley's 1936 novel "Brave New World"? In his utopia, people took Soma to keep smiling through the day. We have Prozac. In his world, assigned identity was a cornerstone of function. In ours, social class and identity politics increasingly determine one's place in the scheme of things. In his, surfeit was the index of well-being. In ours, the bumper tag smartly reads, "When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping."

'Traditionally, animation has been dominated by men, but today the best animators are women," declares Jules Engel, head of the experimental animation department at CalArts. "Women are taking animation into complex new thematic terrain--I don't know any male animator in America presently making work that has the presence and originality I've been seeing in work by women filmmakers."

In the end, all the joy and disbelief came together in a single red carpet that led Vanessa Schwartz from her curbside limousine to the Shrine Auditorium's glittering entrance. The 25-year-old CalArts student found herself in the improbable position of Oscar hopeful on Monday night. Her first effort, a project called "The Janitor" made at the Valencia art school, had been nominated in the short animated film category. It felt, she said, like a dream.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.