Celebrating Dance Magazine Award Honoree Lula Washington

This week we’re sharing tributes to all of the 2025 Dance Magazine Award honorees. For tickets to the awards ceremony on December 8, visit store.dancemedia.com.

Before she built one of Los Angeles’ most influential dance companies, Lula Washington had already learned to break through the barriers others placed in her path.

When the Watts native was 22, after the University of California, Los Angeles, deemed her “too old” to begin a dance career, she appealed the decision and secured a spot in the program. While there, she founded the school’s Black Dance Association, creating a space for Black dance artists to build community in the face of racism. That spirit of resistance crested in 1980, when she founded the Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Theatre with her husband, Erwin, then a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. The troupe would later be renamed the Lula Washington Dance Theatre.

Washington has long made it her mission to create and platform art that honors and stewards Black culture, viewing social activism and cultural practice through a contemporary dance lens. Her company has toured the world for more than four decades, performing her soul-stirring works that draw from African and Afro-Haitian dance alongside liturgical, modern, ballet, street, and hip-hop forms. The troupe also maintains a robust repertory, featuring works by luminaries such as Katherine Dunham, Donald Byrd, and Rennie Harris.

Carrying that mission beyond the stage, Washington established­ the Lula Washington Dance Theatre School in 1983 to provide affordable dance training for Los Angeles youth. Initially an after-school program called “I Do Dance, Not Drugs!”, the school’s programming has since expanded tenfold, encompassing youth ensembles, summer intensives, and partnerships with prominent Los Angeles cultural institutions, like the Music Center, as well as an annual Kwanzaa Festival that has become a beloved community tradition. Her alumni now perform with professional companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Philadanco, and Garth Fagan Dance. Washington has also brought her artistry to Hollywood,­ contributing choreography to the original The Little Mermaid and the groundbreaking Avatar.

Washington’s career is still very much in motion. In 2021, the company received a $970,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Yet her most cherished act has been her investment in community, an effort that has bridged Black dance’s role as a force for empowerment with a vision of access for generations to come.