Washington, Roumain, Adam and Eve: a nice combo

After a dozen years of trial upon tribulation, things are looking up for the Lula Washington Dance Theatre. Among the good news: a permanent company home on Crenshaw Boulevard to be christened next month and the local troupe’s first appearance at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts on Friday night.

Even better, the debut highlighted Washington’s collaboration with innovative composer Daniel Bernard Roumain, whose dynamic fusion of jazz, classical, hip-hop and rock has people likening him simultaneously to Mozart and Prince.

The result was “One Man/One Woman ... and the Rest Is History ‘04,” a retelling of the Judeo-Christian creation myth that smartly avoided any mention of a snake.

Instead, “One Man/One Woman” focused on Bernard Brown’s good-guy Adam discovering a newly born Eve, the superb April Thomas Wilkins, and the couple’s delight in each other and their paradise before the fateful apple entered the story.

The piece demonstrated Washington’s skill at narrative cohesion even as it left one disputing the logic of interrupting Brown and Wilkins’ tender embraces with ill-fitting displays of balletic technique.

Somehow, one imagines our purported foremother and forefather getting down with their not-yet-bad selves in that happy garden rather than executing slow leg extensions.

Roumain layered a live violin performance over his lyrically evocative orchestral work, “Hymnal Trans Dance,” on tape. But the audience was already primed -- Roumain had stolen the show moments before the premiere with a stunning introduction to his eclectic oeuvre.

A consummate musician, he coaxed a range of sounds out of the instrument, from a woe-inflected interpretation of “Amazing Grace” to turntable-like scratching and deafening electric Jimi Hendrix riffs in the potent “Hip Hop Study” (accompanied by his band, DBR’s Mission: keyboardist Wynne Bennett, drummer Kenny Grohowski, and DJ Scientific).

For Washington’s “Spontaneous Combustion,” Roumain also appeared alongside a galvanizing jazz ensemble featuring drummer Marcus L. Miller, alto sax man Bobby Bryant Jr., Michael Sessions on soprano sax and Trevor Ware on bass.

This second premiere of the evening saw the company improvising responses to a rapidly changing musical landscape, often with quick shifts in weight and balance as the dancers seamlessly fused virtuosic leaps and club, West African and modern dance moves in Washington’s trademark style.

Capped by a rousing finale that emulated the dance’s title in energy and design, what could have been little more than a classroom exercise was elevated by standout performances by musicians and dancers alike, most notably three successive solos in which Michelle Hall, Aisha Hall and guest artist Nabachwa Ssensalo interacted effortlessly with Roumain.

Also on the program were the familiar “Mahal Dances ‘02” and “Prayer of the Black Madonna ‘03,” the latter highlighting Ssensalo’s gravitas.

Kicking off the bill was yet a third premiere, “The Bach Project ‘04,” a “lite” concert opener that displayed Washington’s ambitious tendencies -- and how these can backfire on her.

A farce as insubstantial as the bubbles projected on the scrim behind a cast that included clowns, a lord and lady and a street-smart B-boy, it provided little insight into the Baroque master’s pizzicato exercises in contrapuntal complexity.