Those kids and their hiphop. Today at the Greasy Kid Stuff-hosted kids’ disco, while Bhangra rhythms got the party started, it was Secret Agent 23 Skidoo’s I Gotta Be Me, complete with a call-response chorus, that really got ’em grooving. “I gotta be me!” the kids yelled. And their enlightened parents smiled approvingly.

Meanwhile, in the next classroom, selections from The Young People’s Film & Video Festival held kids’ and parents’ attention, with, among other works, a super-cute child-crafted-and-narrated series of claymation shorts, illustrating concepts like the seasons and the water cycle. (Kudos, Liz Randall, Davis Elementary’s filmmaker-In-residence.)

Back on the dance floor, Ribbit Ribbit coaxed parents and toddlers to hop around like frogs (and sounded much more “street” with the recording’s hiphop beat).

But a quick “time out”: While kids don’t require much in the way of ambience, parents who were promised a space “transformed into an all-ages lounge” may have been dismayed to find an ordinary, brightly-lit classroom as the de facto discotheque.

Meanwhile, the “soft room”—with walls thickly lined with shaggy strips of repurposed fabric, set in a rainbow spectrum—looked pretty splendid, and big pillows on the floor offered a promising flop-space. But what should have been a stimulating kid-friendly environment, stimulated one of the wrong senses: it smelled. A picky parent would have to wonder whether the used fabrics had been laundered—which might explain why no kids were kickin’ it in the soft room when Culturephile stopped by.

For more information on TBA events, visit PICA. A more comprehensive list of upcoming events can be found at our Arts & Entertainment Calendar.