The power of painting to inspire artists working in other media is well known. Mussorgsky’s set of piano pieces “Pictures at an Exhibition” (1874) and Nat “King” Cole’s chart-topping “Mona Lisa” (1950) are but two examples.

On Wednesday evening, an audience of over a thousand came to the Lied Center to check out a spanking new trilogy of painting-inspired dances called “colÃ’r-ógraphy, n. The Dances of Jacob Lawrence,” commissioned and performed by the acclaimed Dayton Contemporary Dance Company.

Judging by the hearty applause and cheers that punctuated the evening, and an enthusiastic standing ovation at the concert’s end, the Ohio company’s project was a success.

Conceptually, a trio of dances based on the paintings of Lawrence (1917-2000) was a natural. Reflecting the exuberance of the Harlem Renaissance, Lawrence evolved a bold figurative style that imbued his portrayals of African American life with an edge, palette and rhythm perfect for choreographic adaptation.

In the opening “J. Lawrence Paint (Harriet Tubman Remix),” choreographer Donald Byrd, working from Lawrence’s 40-panel series “The Life of Harriet Tubman” (1940), propelled his protagonist through a dense weave of patterns alluding to her struggle to help find passage for runaway slaves seeking freedom via the Underground Railroad.

Using the whole stage to advantage, Byrd’s 13 dancers fragmented and rejoined – questing, seeking, leaping, beseeching – in vignettes set to thumping, hip-hopped remixes in which strains of Sarah Vaughan, Bent, Moby, Bigga Bush, Archie Shepp and Mondo Grosso were sliced, diced and dipped in rich disco-esque marinades.

The Dayton’s dancers were awesome. Young, vigorous, athletic, and possessing poise and attitude, the company’s young women and men danced up a storm. Even in repose, there was a sense that they could not be contained. These aspects were abundantly clear in Reggie Wilson’s “We Ain’t Goin’ Home but We Fixed to Get the Hell Up Outta Here,” in which eight dancers’ painterly poses burst forth into ecstatic movements exploding across the footlights.

Like Byrd’s work, the dance was broken into episodes set to a largely African-esque mix that also included Al Green’s classic take on “For the Good Times.”

Visually, the evening’s most striking piece was Rennie Harris’s “Jacobs Ladder.” At once ominous and celebratory, there was a noirish urbanity expressed in Harris’s vernacular dance movements, the streetwise joie de vivre of the dancers, and the projection of, one presumes, glimpses of Lawrence’s cityscapes.

In contrast to Byrd’s and Wilson’s episodic pieces, Harris’ dashing designs attained greater coherence and momentum thanks to having been set to a single piece of music. However, it seems that each part of the trilogy could benefit from editing. Indeed, on more than several occasions, the audience started to applaud only to be confronted with yet one more episode.

The dancers, then, should be saluted for their heroic stamina and verve, as well as their artistry. Kudos are also in order for James Clotfelter’s lighting, Robin Rothlein’s set and production designs and Omotayo “Wunmi” Olaiya’s costumes. The program also included the diverting “Continuing Education” for two couples choreographed by the Dayton’s artistic director Kevin Ward.