Is it the $1.8 billion his film has garnered in world-wide box office receipts?

Pish-tosh! All in a day’s work!

James Cameron is a happy man because he stands surrounded by beautiful modern dancers: choreographer Lula Washington and her troupe’s two leading ladies, Christa Oliver and Tamica Washington-Miller.

Lula, truly the Queen of Crenshaw Boulevard, is celebrating her 30th anniversary as a Los Angeles-based dance maker and community activist.

She is the brain, and her dancers the bodies, behind the supple movements of the Na’vi people of planet Pandora in Cameron’s “Avatar.” In this marvelous photo, you can see the Washington troupe at work with James Cameron. Click here.

I write about Lula’s anniversary and about her collaboration with Cameron in this Sunday’s Los Angeles Times — Calendar Arts & Books section.

Photo credit: Mark Fellman / 20th Century Fox