Squeezed between University and Atlantic avenues on tiny Elton Street, an old red brick building reverberates with rhythm. Follow the music into the building and upstairs into a high-ceilinged loft and you'll find a diverse bevy of performers - some enthusiastically drumming away on African drums, others undulating to the pulsing organic beat, bare feet stamping the wooden floorboards. An after-hours party in Fort Greene, Brooklyn? No; this is the home of Rochester's Bush Mango Drum and Dance.

This weekend, the African dance and drum group will present "Joy! A Solstice Celebration." Artistic Director Colleen Hendrick choreographed the program and will perform in it along with a cast of 12 others, including Musical Director Blair Hornbuckle. The dancers and drummers range in age from 13 to 50 years old. In true West African style, Bush Mango works to invoke the audience kinesthetically in their performances, weaving amongst them, encouraging rhythmic participation.

During a recent rehearsal, the studio was abuzz with energy, but there was an overriding aura of relaxed congeniality as well, an expansiveness of spirit that radiated from the welcoming smiles of the performers to the benevolent gaze of Martin Luther King Jr. on an oversized wall poster.

The dancers were clad in an assortment of bright practice clothes: pink, green, and purple warm-up pants, skirts, and leotards. Likewise, their skin tones were as varied as their ages. Bush Mango strives to unite people of all cultures, races, ages, and socio-economic backgrounds through the transformative power of African dance, music, and song. Community is key. And it appears to be an affable group; the dancers laughed together as they shimmied across the floor, the drummers stopped to high five each other. Absent was the competitive tension that seethes like current through an invisible fence through the ranks of many accomplished dance companies.

Hendrick dances amongst her company members. At the rehearsal, her black knit cap kept her long brown hair out of her eyes as she slithered her arms through the air, sculpting shapes in space, then reached upwards - first one hand, then the other - flicking her wrists as if plucking ripe fruit from trees. Occasionally, she halted the other dancers to demonstrate a section of the movement as she counted aloud. Or she paused to consult with Hornbuckle, playing alongside her on djembe drum.

Hendrick and Hornbuckle have been working together since 2001, when the parent organization founded 20 years ago by Hendrick - Hendrick Dance Project - joined forces with Hornbuckle's more loosely formed Bush Mango. The name comes from the fruit tree that provides a hardwood used for making drums. Hendrick earned her BA in choreography and performance from Empire State College. She has taught at the University of Rochester, Hobart William Smith College, and SUNY Brockport, and was awarded the Lillian Fairchild Award for artistic excellence for "Days Swinging Home," a piece she choreographed in 1993. Hornbuckle has been performing for more than a decade, including opening for legendary reggae group The Wailers, and playing to a crowd of 80,000 people at Woodstock '99.

Inevitably, African dance in Rochester draws associations to Garth Fagan Dance. While Hendrick did study under Fagan at Brockport and took company class with them for years, her passion is for pure, unadulterated African dance; Fagan choreographs mainly in the contemporary vein.

"Fagan uses the roots of African dance as a way in, but we focus on it exclusively," Hendrick says. "He teaches contemporary modern dance. We don't."

Besides running its dance company, Bush Mango offers a range of classes in West African dancing and drumming for the general public, and maintains a highly regarded youth project, which is supported by funding from Quad A for Kids, an organization dedicated to improving the personal and social development of Rochester youth. Impressively, participants of the Bush Mango Youth Project stay with the program for an average of seven years; 96 percent of the teens involved graduate from high school.

All of Bush Mango's students study both drumming and dance; the two are inseparable in traditional West Africa movement and music. The polyrhythmic beat of African music is often challenging for Westerners and demands focused and sustained attention. Hendrick and Hornbuckle have both studied intensively with master drummers in West Africa.

"There is no place where music is not wed to dance and dance to music," Hendrick says. Seated on an old futon, legs pulled up beneath her, hands cupping a mug of coffee, Hendrick speaks with animation about the music and dance traditions of Guinea, the people who most directly influence her work.

"They can't wrap their heads around how we don't always get the music," she says. "To them, being out of alignment with the music means being out of alignment with yourself."

In West Africa, traditional dance and drumming connect people together in the cycles of life, Hendrick says. Births, deaths, marriages, the changing of the seasons - all are expressed through movement and music. The people, do not, Hendrick stresses, dance to be observed, but to connect with each other.

This weekend, Hendrick, Hornbuckle and their entourage will call on the greater Rochester community to celebrate the approach of the winter solstice with them. "It's going to be over-the-top joyous," Hendrick says. "We'll probably bust out of our skins!"

Bush Mango Drum & Dance: Joy! A Solstice Celebration

Friday, December 11-Saturday, December 12

Bush Mango Community Center, 34 Elton St.

7:30 p.m. | $8-$18 | 235-3960, bushmango.com