When I arrived in Gaines Theatre Friday night at 6 p.m., two hours before “Step Afrika” would hit the stage, every green-stitched seat was empty, the house lights dimly lit the stage and only a small group of students in a circle of yellow CAB shirts signaled the coming event.

Performer Jakari Sherman stood center stage, materializing out of the dimly lit backstage. The Houston, Texas native knit his hands over his shaven head looking up into the rafters. Light pronounced the purple bags under his eyes as he attempted to recall just where the last three days had taken him: from Colorado Springs, to Martinsville, to Greensboro.

“We stopped at Jacksonville State before Martinsville,” Mfon Akpan, another Step Afrika member, said. She sat down in the second row, throwing her legs up on the seat in front of her. Tonight she could sit back and enjoy the show — a break the dancers rarely enjoy during their heavily booked Black History month tour.

Step Afrika is a dance company specializing in “stepping.” Based in Washington D.C., the group’s founder Brian Williams learned to step as a member of his college fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha. Williams founded the company in 1994 after exploring the African-American art form.

Delonte Briggs stood at the front of the stage, his eyes full of anticipation, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Do we have any spike tape?” he shouted to the windows of the lighting booth. Spike tape is used to mark positions on the stage for performers. The resounding ‘No’ hung in the air.

Looks darted back and forth between Briggs and the few dancers near him. The nearby Ferguson Center for the Arts premiered “Urinetown,” the same night. TheatreCNU, undoubtedly, had spike tape.

Stepping, for any fortunate enough to have seen it, is a form of dance characterized by the rhythmic stomping of feet, clapping of hands and — used most effectively by the experienced — the spoken word.

But to consider the form as merely dance robs these performers of half their prestige. Individually, they are both dancers and musicians.

Brian McCollum found a substitute for the spike tape. He crawled along the bulging and cracked wooden stage pasting strips at even intervals.

As the seven dancers lined up at their respective positions, something was out of order. The marks that McCollum was interrupted while making had only six positions. The issue was easily resolved as the dancers shifted, separating themselves between the markings instead of on top of them. After examining the stage, McCollum warned the troupe that the old stage would give to the pressure of their stomps the farther away from the audience they moved. At a certain point, they risked their artistic voices. They risked silence.

Ryan Johnson is a freshman in the program but a veteran in his own field.

“I studied under Gregory Heinz,” he said.

The tap legend tutored Ryan from the young age of 12. At only 20, he is the youngest member of the company.

He balances a full course load at Towson University in Maryland along with the worldwide touring of Step Afrika.

The young scholar remains humble even though his tap talents are showcased throughout the show. “These people are brilliant. They teach me real life stuff.”

The show is much more than a dance performance. The scenes construct a history of the people who created the art form of step.

Soldiers returning from World War I are credited with creating the art form in the first African-American fraternities.

They combined the influences of marching bands and African-American slave dances.

Sherman attributed the initially rigid call and response form to the soldiers’ military training. The influences of subsequent cultural developments, those of jazz, tap and later Hip-Hop, provided new creative development in step.

“Step Afrika” seeks to combine the similarities between general artistic forms and, more importantly, people.

Their performance was nothing short of electrifying. The rhythm developed by generations of human percussion beat for an hour, resounding in the audience and the small, deteriorating theatre.

The worldwide influences were felt through the seven-man orchestra’s feet, hands and mouths.