Gerry Furth-Sides
It feels like bittersweet, unintended scheduling that the venerated Los Angeles-based Lula Washington Dance Theatre returns to the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts to celebrate its 40th anniversary Thursday, January 30 through Saturday February 1, 2020, one week after the passing of Kobe Bryant.
It feels like bittersweet, unintended scheduling that the venerated Los Angeles-based Lula Washington Dance Theatre returns to the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts to celebrate its 40th anniversary Thursday, January 30 through Saturday February 1, 2020, one week after the passing of Kobe Bryant. Both represent very distinctive forms of Los Angeles energy and endurance in “inner city” performers who have been embraced worldwide, even if one is iconic and the other lesser known. Both with so much discipline and preparation to make soaring, magical performances look seamless on their stages.
Ironically, Lula Washington started the company because she was initially turned down for being too old (22) by the UCLA dance program. On the lighter side, we all loved the story of Kobe strengthening his ankles by taking tap dance lessons, the only adult in a class of elementary school children.
Launching the company’s year-long anniversary celebration, the program features the company’s usual dynamic and powerful themes that explore social and humanitarian issues. Three world premieres and a West Coast premiere mix jazz, hip-hop, African movement, ballet, modern, tap and other dance styles with the high energy for which the company I’d id known along with along with new works from new voices, some of whom are a generation younger than co-founders Lula and Erwin Washington.
They include world premieres of To Lula with Love created for the occasion by celebrated choreographer Christopher Huggins, a former member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and Lula Washington Dance Theatre alum, and Hands Up: A Testimony by company alumnus Tommie Waheed Evans, which focuses on his experience growing up in Los Angeles and its meaning.
Two works by company Founder/Artistic Director Lula Washington include the world premiere of excerpts from Fragments, about the frenetic pace of current life, and King, which she created in 2007 about the struggles of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights movement, and Reign, a joyous gospel-fueled work by hip-hop concert pioneer Rennie Harris commissioned by Lula Washington Dance Theatre in 2010 for its then 30th anniversary.
The Wallis’ 2019/2020 dance schedule features Los Angeles-based companies exclusively, marking the first time a major Southern California performing arts venue has presented an all-local dance line-up during a single season. Dance @ The Wallis is sponsored, in part, by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.