L.A. LISTENS AS WASHINGTON MAKES CASE.

It might have required a lawsuit, but the Lula Washington Dance Theatre's long struggle to rebuild its earthquake-damaged Los Angeles home made recent progress when company members finally got what seemed like a receptive audience with the city they are suing.

"We'll have to wait and see, but I think now there's an increased awareness of the problem and a little bit better understanding," said Erwin Washington, Lula Washington's husband and the troupe's executive director. He spoke in July, just after the couple and some thirty-five students and company members had attended a Los Angeles City Council meeting to plead their case, which names the city and its Community Redevelopment Agency.

The Washingtons' racially mixed modern dance troupe, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary this year, tours widely and has earned respect nationally for spirited, thoughtful performances and extensive innercity outreach activities, such as an I Do Dance, Not Drugs program for at-risk youth.

But the company suffered a major setback when L.A.'s notorious 1994 Northridge quake forced it to raze the building it owned. Reconstruction efforts began, but, the troupe's suit charges, in the fall of 1998, after issuing all the required approvals to begin construction, the Community Redevelopment Agency blocked final approval of a building permit. Instead, according to the suit, the agency intentionally used "delay tactics" to pursue the development of a shopping center on and around the company's land. As a result, the company has had to pay $3,500 monthly to rent a far smaller temporary space. In the interim, it has tried to become a part of the shopping center or rebuild elsewhere at city expense.

The lawsuit asks the city for a permit allowing the Washingtons to rebuild on their original site and for an unspecified amount of money for lost income, rental fees, litigation expenses and other costs.

"All of this has created a serious financial hardship for us," says Lula Washington, the company's choreographer and artistic director.

Over the past six years, the company has spent roughly $400,000, most of it in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds, on demolition, permits, soil studies and the like to reconstruct its original site. But never in that time did city officials, who declined to comment on the matter because of the pending suit, agree to discuss the rebuilding issue with them, the Washingtons say. That's why they filed the suit and visited the City Council, where dancers, parents and students such as Nansamba Ssensalo spoke up.

"By trying to replace our studio with a shopping center, the city is basically saying the arts aren't important to the community," Ssensalo said. "People walk off the street into our school and it gives these kids, who would otherwise be doing nothing, something very positive to do."

The testimony, after which an attorney for the city "expressed a desire to talk to our attorneys," seemed to have made a difference, Erwin Washington said.

"Now I think they want to try to work something out. I think we made progress."