Going to bat for an asian-pacific performance fest : theater: 'treasure in the house,' a monthlong series, is dan kwong's effort to introduce asian-americans to local arts venues.

Performance artist Dan Kwong, 36, strides into his Venice house carrying a couple of baseball bats. No, Kwong says, he doesn’t carry bats everywhere he goes. He’d just hoped to find a little

practice time during the day, to keep up his skills as a player for the Little Tokyo Giants, “the oldest organized Japanese League baseball team in Los Angeles.” But Kwong’s bats are also

props. He began winning favorable notice on the performance-art circuit two years ago with his first one-man show, “Secrets of the Samurai Centerfielder,” an exploration of personal and

cultural identity in the context of the all-American sport. But as principal organizer for “Treasure in the House,” the monthlong Asian/Pacific Performance Festival opening at Highways

Performance Space in Santa Monica tonight, lately he has had little time for between-games practice. About 30 artists are involved in the event. Kwong carefully calls it a “performance”

festival rather than “performance art” because “very few people in this festival would think of themselves as performance artists, nor do they have a sense of what that really means.” The

festival is operating on “no budget.” “The artists will be paid strictly through a split of the door, which is Highways’ policy,” Kwong said. The festival opens with “The Tiger on the Right

/ The Dragon on the Left.” The five-woman show, which ran for seven weeks at the Fountain Theatre, sprang from a workshop led by Jude Narita (best known for her one-woman show, “Coming Into

Passion: Song for a Sensei”) and includes 13 solo and ensemble pieces squeezed into just over an hour. Narita, who will also present work on Aug. 28 with several other members of

Pacific/Asian-American Women Writers West, said that no Asian-American performance festival “quite as ambitious as this” has previously been mounted in Los Angeles. The festival idea

originated last spring, when Kwong was Highways’ representative in National Assn. of Artists’ Organizations-sponsored productions in Santa Monica, Houston, New Orleans and Atlanta. The tour

“overall was wonderful, but the biggest disappointment for me was that we had very little Asian-American turnout,” Kwong said. Joining the Highways advisory board, Kwong aired his concerns

about the lack of connections between performance art venues and Asian-American communities. Soon, he was asked to organize some late-summer events. Later, becoming “desperate for a name for

this festival,” he consulted the I Ching. The result was “Treasure in the House,” an interpretation of a hexagram that stands for the family or clan. “The way I structured the festival is

along sociological lines. One event is women, another event is immigrant Asian-Americans, another is Asian-Americans with multiracial lives,” Kwong said. “There’s a men’s event--that’s the

one I’m having the most trouble with. That’s the only one I’m participating in--wouldn’t you know it!” Steve Durland, editor of High Performance, a Los Angeles magazine devoted to

performance art, said Kwong is representative of local performance artists who are “doing alternative histories of Los Angeles. Dan is developing work that not only is interesting but helps

educate a broader audience to the issues of being--in his case--both Japanese-American and Chinese-American in Los Angeles.” More Asian-American women than men are involved in the festival.

“In Asian culture, as in most cultures, the men are so heavily conditioned to be the provider, to do something practical, that to be in the performing arts is already going against very

heavy conditioning about male roles,” Kwong said. In addition, both male and female performers expressed “hesitation, reluctance, self-doubt” about participating. They wondered, “ ‘Am I any

good? Do I have anything worthwhile to say?’ ” Kwong said. “The lack of confidence is so insidious.” For himself, he added, “I’ve learned to distrust my self-doubt. I guess that’s a

backwards way of saying I’ve gotten more self-confidence. To me, telling your story is an act of self-empowerment and validation of the experience of you, your family and your culture.” * _

“Treasure” includes seven solo and group performances, most of which will be presented twice. All shows: 8:30 p.m.; admission: $10. Information: (213) 453-1755. _ MORE TO READ