Karen Goodman

Many of the key awards came in pairs when the eighth annual Lester Horton Dance Awards were announced during a ceremony on the plaza in front of the Japan America Theatre in Little Tokyo on Friday. Named for the Los Angeles modern dance pioneer who died in 1953, the Hortons honor Southern California achievement during the past year and are voted by members of the Dance Resource Center, a local service organization.

* Theater. Julie Kavner, Julianna Margulies and Rosie Perez will kick off a long-term engagement of the return of Eve Ensler's international hit show, "The Vagina Monologues," featuring a different celebrity cast every three weeks, beginning Oct. 13 at 8 p.m. at the Canon Theatre, 205 N. Canon Drive in Beverly Hills. Regular schedule: Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 and 7 p.m. $25-$49.50. (310) 859-2830, (213) 365-3500. * Theater.

Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon's affectionate, informative "Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud" (at the Sunset 5 Saturdays and Sundays at 11 a.m.) will make most people realize how little they know about the visionary best known as the creator of the geodesic dome.

Time may stop for no man, but it seems to have slowed for veteran choreographer Rudy Perez. Celebrating a quarter-century of dance making in Los Angeles (a co-founder of New York's Judson Theater Dance Workshop, his career spans five decades), Perez still commands attention with his acute insight into bodies moving through space.

All's well that ends. Well, "Feet Speak's" final program, "Mixed Directions," seen Friday at Occidental College, did not exactly go out with a big bang, but several gems--all premieres--lent the series a fitting farewell. Adrienne Clancy's vigorous new work "Les Ames Soeurs" (Soul Sisters) featured the choreographer, Licia Perea, Madeline Soglin, Karen Woo and Yvette Wulf in a series of spotlight-grabbing moves with fabulous partnering.

The Times reviewed only about one-fifth of the Fringe dance events: too small a sample for reliable conclusions about the venture as a whole. To reiterate the primary issue limiting the interest of Fringe programming: Many of the best-regarded companies in Southern California were conspicuous by their absence.

Self-dramatization can be a dangerous game in the dance world. On Sunday, for instance, deeply intelligent and purposeful dancer-choreographer Karen Goodman repackaged herself as a manic, self-obsessed and ever-so-theatrical character bearing her name for a 75-minute text-dominated solo titled "Close Dancing" at Cal State L.A. In this first event in the Luckman Theater's series of "Intimate Encounters," the audience sat on the stage, close to Goodman and surrounding her on three sides.

Women's creativity has always been the touchstone of modern dance. Plugging into that tradition gave the "Women at Work" program on Saturday in the Keck Theater at Occidental College a plausible curatorial mission. Here were five adventuresome, locally based artists who brought to this second event in the ongoing Feet Speak series a deep sense of self-definition: dance as a journey toward personal truths.

10:30am Music/Family The 28th Peninsula Music Fair not only features two Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts, but also a host of dance, storytelling and other activities. * 28th Peninsula Music Fair, Chadwick School, 26800 S. Academy Drive, Palos Verdes Peninsula. 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Youth Concert featuring Copland, Bernstein and Berlioz, with host David Prather: 1:30 p.m. Family Concert, with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting a program of Debussy and Ravel: 3:30 p.m. $6-$20. (310) 318-8166.

The moment from one of my first years at the newspaper remains vivid in memory. A merry-eyed woman in what the broadcaster Bill Ballance might call her middle earlies, or possibly her early middles, came to my office and said, "I'm supposed to be doing publicity for a nightclub and I haven't the faintest idea how to do it. Tell me."