Letter from Wuhan 1

Dance
Greetings from Wuhan, one of China’s “four furnaces.” It’s a hot one today, blazingly sticky and humid; for every particle of air, an equivalent particle of dirt. The dancers already had class and rehearsal and are hanging out, resting, before tonight’s show. Wuhan is a big old-industry town in the heartland of China, a bastion ...

Micah Moch flies in Rennie Harris’s “Reign” in Luohe, P.R.C.

Dance
Micah in the middle. Photo courtesy Keith Lommel, U.S. Embassy in Beijing

Where the heck are we in Henan Province? We’re in Xinyang. 3

Dance
At the close of Day 18 of a 25-day performance tour through four provinces of China, we find ourselves in a netherworld of time and space. No one on the bus can remember what day of the week it is — or where we are. The daily drill goes like this: In the morning, after ...

South Los Angeles dance warriors visit Shaolin Temple monks

Dance
A tribe of urban warriors — skipping, leaping, jumping and hip-hopping their way across Henan Province — scaled the hills of Shaolin to visit the local Buddhist monastery.

Cultures collide, collaborate, in Xucheng, P.R.C.

Dance
Lula Washington & Chinese colleagues and hosts In the arts funding world, they call it “cultural exchange.” In the real world, we call it the love and mutual respect that flows between artists. Here, where the bare foot meets the marley floor, artists mash up and collaborate. Two Chinese choreographers, Ma Bin from Hainan Island ...

Lula Washington Dance Theatre superb in Zhengzhou 6

Dance · Reviews
There was no better place to be on earth  — not New York, not Paris, not London, nor Beijing. All of the action tonight was at a Roman-style outdoor amphitheater one hour outside Zhengzhou, PRC. That’s the capitol city of Henan Province (pop: 94 million). There, at SIAS University, the 13 dancers of Lula Washington ...

Freedom Jazz Movement @ Henan Province’s SIAS University

Music · Reviews
A slight nip in an otherwise balmy late-spring Chinese evening gave an edge to the polished set the Los Angeles-based jazz quartet, Freedom Jazz Movement, laid down at SIAS University in Henan Province tonight. The show took place at the privately owned university’s Roman-style outdoor amphitheater. Four exceptional musicians, delivering a suite of band leader ...

Train to Zhengzhou for Lula Washington Dance Theatre 1

Dance
The only booties that were not shaking after Lula Washington Dance Theatre’s visit to Xian (she-yan) were those of the 3,000-year-old terracotta warriors. The lively, Los Angeles-based, African-American dance troupe performed in Xi’an twice, both times to about 1,000 people. Everybody got all shook up. But the stony warriors proved impervious to modern dance. Here ...

Lula Washington Dance Theatre rocks Xi’an

Dance
[slideshow id=17 w=500] Lula Washington with her indefatigable stage manager Terri James. Lula with Erwin Washington, husband/business manager Dancers Dwayne Brown, Micah Moch, Ramon Thielen stretch. Four-piece jazz combo accompanying the tour, plus a fifth wheel. Band tunes up on local instruments. Audience includes a brigade of security guys. Young dance fans peek thru a ...

In China, with Lula 1

Dance
At right, the irrepressible dancers of Lula Washington Dance Theatre, who open a 25-day tour of China, noodle around the Air China terminal at Beijing Airport prior to flying to Xi’an, the capital city of Sha’anxi province. The tour’s sponsors include the U.S. Department of State and SAIS University of Henan Province. The troupe and ...