Dance : ‘Multicultural Man’ Is High Point for Japan America Series

Choreographer Donald Byrd introduced one of his extraordinary works Saturday on the “Celebrate California” series at the Japan America Theatre.

In a too-infrequent visit to the Southland, Byrd also brought his troupe, the Group, to the program split with Lula Washington’s Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Theater.

Byrd’s new piece, “Multicultural Man,” is less a solo for him than a multivalent collaboration with composer Mio Morales. Morales, dressed in a scientist’s white frock coat, crazy keyboard-design pants and electronic headset, stands juxtaposed to Byrd, who wears a kind of tribal outfit (grass skirt, orange jacket and kerchief).

The pairing of technology and primitive culture tips in favor of scientific control at first, as Byrd repeats the Svengali-like movements of Morales, whose breathing, speech, song and cries are electronically manipulated to provide the sound score. But new relationships emerge between them, and throughout, Byrd’s strength and vulnerability prove compelling.

Morales also composed the music for “Bolla Blu,” a battle-between-the-sexes duet introduced to Los Angeles and danced with power and sensitivity by Ruthlyn Salomons and Juca Dumont.

Also new to Los Angeles was Byrd’s “What Makes Samantha . . .” a continuation of his rich exploration of ballet, with Wendi Lees Beckwitt as the punk ballerina, Jeremy Lemme as the flying imp and Andre George and Robert Logan-Mayo as other partners.

For her part, Washington offered works that dug into ideas, but not too deeply. “Tasting Muddy Waters,” her solo now passed on to daughter Tamica Washington, at one point suggests sexual allure as a strategy against the chains of slavery, but ends in a shallow, sensual strut.

Her new group piece, “Raw” (to music performed live by Robert Dale) attempts to evoke the problem of narcissistic fixation; even so, Washington’s spoken remark, “South Africa is still not free,” emerged as an appendage.

Washington’s “A Duke for the ‘90s,” previously reviewed, completed the program.