ALL-CHINESE SHOWS MARK ARTS TREND

The Chinese Moon Festival being held Friday and Saturday nights at the Orange County Performing Arts Center is the latest part of a growing local trend in showcasing ethnic arts.

The festival, highlighting traditional Chinese opera, dance and folk songs, is the first presentation at the Center by a single ethnic community group--in this case, the newly formed Pan Pacific Performing Arts Inc.

The two-night program, which features troupes from Taiwan and Hong Kong as well as local youth groups, is also the first of a significantly large number of all-Chinese shows being offered in 1987-88 by Orange County cultural facilities.

An exhibition of Chinese artists will open Sept. 3 at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, and a 25-member troupe from the Peking Puppet Theatre will perform Sept. 16 at Saddleback College.

And later this fall two other touring groups from China will appear at the Center’s Segerstrom Hall: the Central Philharmonic Orchestra (Nov. 9) and the Hangzhou Children’s Palace dance-acrobatic troupe (Nov. 15).

The trend has hardly escaped the attention of the Pan Pacific organizers, who will present their festival at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa.

“The timing could not be better for our community effort. We have this marvelous Center to perform in, and there is now this greater interest in the arts and histories of Asian peoples,” said Dr. George Cheng, chairman of Pan Pacific, which was formed a year ago by Orange County Chinese-Americans.

Actually, Pan Pacific isn’t the first ethnic community organization to present performances at the Center’s 3,000-seat Segerstrom Hall.

The Historical and Cultural Foundation of Orange County--whose affiliates include Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Latino groups--holds that distinction. Last May 10 the foundation co-sponsored the multicultural Internationale concert that was part of the 1987 Imagination Celebration children’s art festival.

But Pan Pacific’s all-Chinese performances this weekend are the first at the Center to be devoted wholly to one ethnic group, as well as the first presented by a single community organization.

The two troupes sent by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education have appeared previously in Southern California in recent years, and they will perform both nights of the Pan Pacific festival at the Center.

Six members of the Fu Hsing Chinese Opera will be seen in scenes from two well-known operas, “The White Serpent” and “The Cross Road Inn.” The 35-member Lanyang Dancers will present several traditional and classical dances.

Also appearing both nights will be two international competition-winning soloists now living in the United States: violinist Niu-yuan Hu and pianist Paulina Drake. (Drake will be replacing soprano Helen Chen Lee, who had to cancel because of illness.)

Saturday’s program will also present Chinese and Western songs by the 53-voice Hong Kong Yip’s Children’s Choir, which has also toured Southern California in recent years.

Friday’s program will feature music and martial arts by students from six Chinese American language/cultural schools in Orange County and songs by another community group, the Baptist Voice Children’s Choir of Alhambra.

Key organizers of the 70-member Pan Pacific Performing Arts Inc. have close ties with the Orange County Performing Arts Center, including George and Arlene Cheng, who are major donors to the Center, and Ruth Ding, a former member of the Center board of directors, who has raised funds for the Center with benefits by the Orange County Chinese Cultural Club.

“It’s been a dream of our (Chinese-American) community for years to present a program at the new hall,” said Ding, who is Pan Pacific’s president and also director of the two-night festival, which she said was costing the organization $41,000 to stage.

Ding said that Pan Pacific’s next involvement will be participation in a multicultural festival next August at the Center. That event, she said, is being planned by the Center’s Directors Emeritus, a group of former Center board members, and the new Protocol Foundation of Orange County.