United in Rhythm

Back when Stomp was strictly British street entertainment, its competition for attention was fierce. But ever since the percussion troupe appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1991, it’s had few challengers to its explosive success.

There are now four Stomp troupes--two on national tours, one in New York and one making international tours. The original British cast was on this year’s Academy Awards show, and various incarnations have made it to both prime-time and late-night TV. This week a version visits the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

The local touring group has a distinct California accent. Four of the 12 performers on the roster appearing in Costa Mesa have a connection to the Golden State, either through birth and nurture or through studying at some major academic institution.

One of them is Kamal Sinclair, 19, born and raised in Hollywood.

Sinclair was among 1,000 people last year who answered a Stomp cattle call in New York.

“At the first audition, they had us just do rhythms with our hands and feet,” she said from Las Vegas, the troupe’s last show before Orange County.

“At the second, they gave us brooms and poles. At the third, they gave us everything--garbage-can lids, poles, brooms, newspapers. They asked us to improvise and create on the spot.”

Tough tryouts, but they reflected the need to keep interesting what is essentially the same show that was in Los Angeles in 1994 and 1995, presented by UCLA.

“The show has pretty much the same structure,” Sinclair said, “but it always changes with the different people because of the different personalities.

“Stomp is kind of an organic show. There’s room for improvisation. Really, it’s an extension of my personality, everybody’s personality. The directors during rehearsals stress that you need to be yourself onstage, to be who you are, because that becomes the personality that people watch.”

Sinclair is the “right smack dab middle” child among five. Her younger sister alone seems to have escaped the artistic fold and became a lawyer; two brothers are actors and the third is a musician.

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Stomper Sinclair started dancing and performing at age 9 in the Bahai workshop in Los Angeles, went on to the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, then to New York University to study experimental theater.

“I wanted to learn to use different media--dance, poetry, as many different kinds things as I could,” she explained. “I liked all the arts, not just dancing, not just theater.

“Stomp epitomizes more of what I’d always wanted to do because it’s involved with theater, dance and music, the whole artistic gamut.

“My first reaction to it was to its spirit of unity. There were all these different kinds of people onstage united in a form of communication, which is rhythm.

“I’m excited to be part of it, the unity aspect it gives off. The spirit you get is very positive, very uplifting. It brings the audience in with the performing. We do audience participation, so it’s not just an us-versus-them kind of feeling.”

Touring is tough, but “there is definitely a family feeling about the company, especially when on tour,” she said.

“We tend to spend time together. It’s a hard life. There are a lot of sacrifices but also a lot of rewards. You do have to live out of suitcases and worry every week about what restaurants to eat in and things like that. But you also get to see beautiful places and a diversity of people. You get to see the world.

“There is a certain hardness to Stomp,” she added. “There are eight shows a week, so on some days there are two shows. It’s an hour and 70 minutes of strength and stamina. It can be tough, especially in Tahoe, where the air was so thin.”

Nobody gets a chance to rest much.

“Pretty much everyone is onstage all the time,” Sinclair said. “There are segues with a few people, but otherwise it’s pretty equally divided up.

“The hand-and-feet routine--that physically is the most exhausting, but also the most fun.

“In the beginning, the last routine--using trash cans to drum on--was the hardest for me. But now that I understand music, it’s one of the most fun; just straight-up making music.”

For her and her teammates, “it’s been an expanding experience artistically. Drummers have had to learn to use their body, actors to use their body, dancers to make music, everybody becoming a new kind of artist that is multitalented, multiskilled.

“I’m just thankful that I’ve got the opportunity to develop. Shows every night are the best training I could ask for.”

* Stomp appears Tuesday through Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 9 p.m. and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $17-$40. (714) 556-2787.