Maria Elena Gaitan

If you met Don Bondi, you'd see he is a dancer. At 61, his body twists and turns with nearly the ease of a kid's. His gait is deliberate, toes cocked outward, heels resting on an invisible cushion. His face belongs to an artist: It is lined, passionate, short of patience for those who do not share his vision.

If you met Don Bondi, you'd see he is a dancer. At 61, his body twists and turns with nearly the ease of a kid's. His gait is deliberate, toes cocked outward, heels resting on an invisible cushion. His face belongs to an artist: It is lined, passionate, short of patience for those who do not share his vision.

An eclectic group of performers and musicians will gather Friday at Plaza de la Raza to raise money for a 13-year-old poet with Epstein-Barr syndrome. Ehecatl Chumacero of Pasadena received the diagnosis one month ago and has missed two months of school, said his mother, Olivia Chumacero. Ehecatl, who attended Washington Middle School, has undergone physical therapy and requires more medical attention. His medical bills have already reached $4,000 and will continue to rise, his mother said.

By most accounts, Don Bondi has been a dynamic, if sometimes obstreperous, teacher of dance. He helped found the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts nine years ago. But for now at least he is tied to a desk writing arts curricula at another school while the county Office of Education decides whether he should be punished for professional misconduct for booing at a school play.

When the Arroyo Bookstore opened a few years ago on Figueroa Street in Highland Park, it was bursting at the seams with books and other reading materials. But after a recent move to new quarters, one of the few stores in Los Angeles concentrating on the Latino experience has a little more breathing room for its array of books, videos and recordings.

Organizers of last year's Expresiones de la Mujer, a festival of women's music, poetry, comedy and film, plan to do it again next Sunday afternoon at Plaza de la Raza. Last year's event attracted so many people that the women from the National Latina Alliance, a nonprofit organization, said they felt obligated to hold it a second year.

Students from the Mujeres y Hombres Nobles alternative high school will display their monoprints at a free reception from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at Self-Help Graphics studio and then auction off their works. For two months, teacher Jose Antonio Aguirre has taken students to the studio at 3802 Cesar E. Chavez Ave. to work with materials and equipment there to produce the works. About 30 students participated, said Assistant Principal Annie Cabrera.

Movies Julie Dash's 1991 film "Daughters of the Dust," about a turn-of-the-century Gullah family, screens as part of the Museum of Television & Radio's observance of Black History Month. The Gullah were descendants of West Africans brought to America by the slave trade and who maintained their heritage while living on the Sea Islands off the South Atlantic coast of South Carolina and Georgia. Dash's story is about one family preparing to leave their home and move North.

Three decades ago, a predominantly Latino neighborhood was torn down to make way for the Los Angeles Music Center. Since that time, with rare exceptions, a Latino presence hasn't been very visible on the site. Only 2% of Mark Taper Forum subscribers are Latino. And only one play by an American Latino writer--"Zoot Suit" in 1978--has been presented at the Taper. This weekend may mark an end to that era.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic is looking for trouble. But I doubt that it was the "explicit language and adult situations" warned of in the program booklet that so divided the audience Thursday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown L.A. That's, after all, the stuff of government these days. And most people surely thought Esa-Pekka Salonen looked rather cute when he exchanged his customary white-tie and tails for a vivid print shirt and pointy white boots.

In response to "School Furor Mirrors L.A.'s Struggles With Diversity," May 30: I applaud the officials of L.A. County High School for the Arts for allowing the outspoken play parodying Gov. Pete Wilson, but am equally abhorred by their reaction to the protest of teacher Don Bondi. Bondi's booing of the play and the expression of his opinion in calling it "tasteless" are deserving of protection. Bondi's actions were an exercise of free speech, just as the play was. It seems the school is promoting a double standard and in the process presenting an unreal view of the criticism that is to be expected when students eventually produce a work in the "real" world.