Group Dynamic

In the typically dynamic and exciting National Ballet of Senegal program Thursday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, one particularly lyric moment stood out.

Dialy Mady Cissokho had gotten the audience to clap along to a beguiling song he was singing as he accompanied himself on the tangy yet sweet-toned kora--a kind of harp-lute fashioned from a large gourd.

He stopped giving the downbeat, but the audience continued to keep proper time, and he deftly fitted skittish rhythmic variations into the frame the people provided.

It was one of those rare moments when both sides of the podium contribute to the event, and it evoked, as perhaps nothing else on the program did, a sense of how the community participates in and contributes to the culture in Senegal.

It may be unfair to single Cissokho out. Certainly, at the end of the piece, he didn’t even stick around long enough to take a solo bow, as if wishing to keep the attention on the song rather than on the singer.

It was hard otherwise to focus very long on any individual, even though, unlike the troupe’s last tour in 1995, the names of everyone in the company appeared in the program (although no distinction was made between musicians and dancers).

Dancers would emerge from the vigorous corps for good-natured but brief pyrotechnical solos, but return to the group quickly.

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In this and other ways, the show, “Pangols: The Spirit of West Africa in Music, Song and Dance,” choreographed by Jean Pierre Leurs and company artistic director Bouly Sonko, was largely the same as the one given three years ago.

Again it was hard to follow the order of the scenes. One also wished for infinitely more information to understand what was being sung, to place the scene in a fuller context, to grasp the complexity of the culture more adequately, rather than just relying on going with the energy, color and flow.

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Still, there were so many sections of explosive group and solo dancing, of forceful and intricate drumming, of amazing stilt-dancing that the show made a powerful impact.

Someday, decades or perhaps a hundred years from now, the Senegalese will be lucky enough to be able to dance in this country without anyone here having to take note of whether the women appeared with their breasts uncovered, as they do in their native country.

With the current controversy surrounding President Clinton, however, this doesn’t seem to be that lucky moment. For the record, the women were covered, except for the court ceremony in which a tribal leader picked a young wife, where the state of undress appeared utterly natural, inoffensive and appropriate to the culture.

The program was jointly sponsored by the Irvine theater and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.

* The National Ballet of Senegal will repeat the program at 8 p.m. today and at 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday in the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive. $27-$32. (949) 854-4646.