Music and Dance Reviews : Lula Washington & Co. Celebrate at USC

Celebrating the eighth anniversary of her Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Theater, and saluting Black History Month as well, Lula Washington presented an evening of performance and awards Sunday at the Bing Theater, USC.

What the dancer-choreographer-director put onstage sustained attention, despite mechanical glitches, a 40-minute delay and speeches, all of which lengthened the event to 3 1/2 hours.

Virginia Capers and Larry Carroll hosted the program with wit, grace and urbanity. The dancers were energetic, disciplined and virtuosic, and Washington’s choreography never overshot the mark or strayed into the realm of pretense.

When she pursued her well-crafted brand of show dance, as in “Shades of Love,” or impersonated the Red Hot Mama in Thelma Robinson’s revue-style “Le Jazz Suite,” Washington maneuvered within the idiom astutely. But when she turned to expressionist agitprop, which characterized the folk-tinged excerpt from “Freedom Suite,” she showed her creative versatility.

In a similar vein was “Women in the Street,” which went a step further from the entertainment slot. It used the hard-message music of Prince to project a forlorn, degraded and mournful image of the feminine black, and in “Urban Man,” a peacock counterpart.