Exotic WOFA dancers, drummers crackling hot

Think cowbell. Now extend it to the size of, say, a long cake pan. Thread it onto a string, sling it around the neck and beat it with two sticks. That’s how several percussionists in the West African group WOFA began a two-hour music and dance program Wednesday at the Maine Center for the Arts.

It may be that this is the first — and therefore smashingly over-the-top — performance on a four-week tour, which includes stops in Canada, Harlem, Staten Island, Miami and West Palm Beach. But this group was crackling hot Wednesday night. The way the dancers danced and the drummers drummed was bewildering and rhythmic and loud in a way that can only be called seductive.

The physical stamina and energy of the seven male drummers and three female dancers were inspiring and refreshing in the same way a spring rainstorm can be. Given that Guinea, the country from which WOFA hails, is one of the rainiest places in West Africa, it’s an obviously apt analogy. Certainly, when it comes to rhythmic sounds, WOFA’s right up there with the allurement of a rainstorm — complete with thunder and lightning and a great sense of exhilaration.

The company performed a dozen pieces drawn from both the olden practices of the Soussou clan, as well as from the global music of today. Some segments drew on ancestral rituals and traditional dances. Others have been developed from the influence of a pan-African vision.

The combination is exactly the strength of WOFA, which translates from the Soso dialect into “let’s go” or “come together.” At times, five connected beats were flying from drums made of calabash, or tree trunks, or goat skins. Add to that halos of sun-colored light and the complicated footwork of birdlike dancers, and there were six rhythms.

WOFA’s technique, which has been a fast-developing project of French artistic director Francois Kokelaere since 1993, is unbridled in its sophistication, its complication uncommercial. Just ask Nokomis Regional High School students, who hit pay dirt with a WOFA master class the day before the Maine Center performance. No one from WOFA speaks fluent English. But rhythm has its own immaculate language.