Liana Leininger Of the 15 Las Virgenes Unified School District students who were honored as regional finalists in the 12th District PTA Reflections art program at the Ventura County Office of Education in Ventura on Jan. 20, two youngsters received Awards of Excellence and will be moving on to the state competition—one in music, the other in dance.

Also, a student at Brookside Elementary School in Oak Park was chosen to compete for the state title in the photography category.

Reflections is a national PTA program that encourages students to explore all forms of art. Students in all grade levels participated in this year’s event by submitting entries of original musical compositions, literature, dance, video production, photography and visual arts with the theme “Beauty Is . . .”

Moving into the next phase of the competition in April are Liana Leininger, a second-grade student at Yerba Buena Elementary School in Agoura Hills, and Joshua Carlon, a second-grader at the Las Virgenes Academy, the district’s home schooling program.

Joshua Carlon Liana’s winning dance/choreography piece is called “The Last Dance.” In the winning video she submitted to the panel of judges, Liana performed a waltz and was depicted as a southern belle, dressed in a big hoop skirt. Liana’s mother, Laura Leininger, chair of the Las Virgenes Arts PTA, said her daughter waltzed with her fourth-grade sister, Lyrissa, who played the part of Liana’s beau and dressed as a confederate soldier.

“At the end, (Liana) put out a hankie and waved goodbye to the soldier because he was going off,” Leininger said.

Liana said she felt happy to win the award and have the chance to compete in the state competition.

Hanna Ritvo “I thought I couldn’t really do it,” she said. “They called my name, and I was proud of myself. Nobody noticed that I actually fell” in the video.

Liana saw her role as a princess rather than the belle of the ball. Her sister, she said, was the prince.

Joshua Carlon, an 8-year-old who is home-schooled in Woodland Hills, wrote an emotionally charged piano piece that he named “The First Snow of Winter.”

Joshua has been taking piano lessons for two years, said his mother, Deborah Carlon. The second-grader studies piano with Edward Francis, founder and executive director of the Thousand Oaks Philharmonic and the president of the Conejo Valley Music Teachers Association.

Joshua recently performed at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza as a participant in the Conjeo Valley MTAC Contemporary Music Gold Medal Honors recital.

“I was surprised, elated, proud,” Carlon said of her son’s big win. “He is a naturally sensitive boy and has always played with feeling. It was so simple and pretty and went really well with the theme. . . . It sounds like mood music.”

Joshua was equally surprised about his win.

“I was very excited about it,” he said. “I really didn’t think I would make it.”

Joshua said he created the classical piece one day when he was thinking about snow.

Hannah Ritvo, a 7-year-old who attends Brookside Elementary School in the Oak Park Unified School District, won an Award of Excellence at the recognition event for her photograph of a duck.

“We were excited. She took a great picture at the farm of a duck,” said Sandra Ritvo, Hannah’s mother. “We were really excited that she moved on to state.”

Ritvo said her daughter was shocked at the win. “She told me, ‘Mom, it’s only a duck.’”

The other regional finalists from the Las Virgenes district honored at the event are:

Dance: Leili Racko, Yerba Buena Elementary School.

Film: Micah Moss, Yerba Buena Elementary School; Hunter Mattox, Lindero Canyon Middle School; Robert Eskanos, Las Virgenes Academy.

Literature: Kendra Woodruff, Lindero Canyon Middle School.

Music: Nathan Fey, Yerba Buena Elementary School; Brina Simon, Agoura High School; Gil Klein, Calabasas High School.

Photography: Raffaella Flores, Agoura High School.

Visual Arts: Katherine Fey, Yerba Buena Elementary School; Evelyn Chang, Yerba Buena Elementary School; Micah Moss, Yerba Buena Elementary School; Alexis Fisher, Calabasas High School.