Pasadena Civic Auditorium

"My Dream," a stunning stage spectacular featuring dancers, singers, musicians, martial artists, acrobats, actors and lavish sets, costumes and lighting effects, will be presented by the world-touring China Disabled People's Performing Art Troupe, on Sunday evening at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

Despite the years of sacrifice and grueling practice, ballet dancer Vina almost turned down a plum role in her first 2004 Chinese New Year show. Since emigrating from China nearly eight years before, she'd given up dancing because of a nerve injury that radiated pain from her lower back through her left leg, making it difficult for her to stand for longer than 10 minutes at a time.

Although the fundraising drive to save the remaining concerts in the Pasadena Symphony and Pasadena Pops' recession-threatened 2008-09 season barely has begun, one of the jeopardized dates, the Jan. 10 symphony performance at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, has been rescued and reprogrammed to include Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Fundraising is just a shade above $100,000 at this point, plus an additional $100,000 in pledges, out of the $3 million to $4 million needed to play the scheduled season, apart from the one classical concert and the three pops holiday shows that already have succumbed, said Jean Horton, the orchestras' interim executive director.

The Pasadena City Council has voted to reject a recommendation by the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission to install controversial public artworks of light tubes and giant caps on the plaza in front of the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. At a meeting earlier this week, the City Council voted instead to accept a recommendation by Pasadena City Manager Michael Beck to seek alternatives for the space. The proposed "Light Field" by German artist Hans Peter Kuhn consists of light tubes 6 feet, 8 inches high on a base that is 15 feet by 38 feet.

Scratch the Orchestras of Pasadena. No, the financially up-against-it Pasadena Symphony and Pasadena Pops have not gone belly up, but their new management has determined that the name the formerly independent organizations had adopted when they merged in 2007 was a flop. The new/old name is the Pasadena Symphony Assn. -- the longtime legal name of the Pasadena Symphony. The change "has been met by a sigh of relief by everybody," says Paul Jan Zdunek, the chief executive who recently arrived from the Modesto Symphony after engineering a fiscal turnaround there.

Please don't feed the ... instruments? Flutes and fiddles (er, violins), trumpets and trombones, cellos, drums, cymbals and all manner of other orchestral instruments will be part of the Pasadena Symphony's "petting zoo" in its latest family-friendly Musical Circus, a free event for children 10 and younger, Saturday morning at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

The presidential election is more than a year away, but a Pasadena group says it's none too early to think about the next President. The Pasadena City Vote Task Force has invited President Clinton and all Republican presidential candidates to an Oct. 29 "town hall forum"--it prefers not to use the word \o7 debate\f7 --at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. "No one is yet committed to being here on Oct.