The history of the percussive performance group known around the world as Stomp began in 1981. Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas of Brighton, UK, were members of a street band, the amusingly named Pookiesnackenburger, which played most of that decade at the Edinburch Festival. As part of Cressell and McNicholas' comic street act, they'd stage such spectacles as assembling dozens of drummers on a pontoon in a Glaswegian lake. After two albums, a popular Heineken commercial and a British TV show, the men turned their sights back to the stage. In 1991, London's Bloomsbury Theatre saw the first performances of a show called Stomp. Audiences and critics took to it immediately. That incited a two-year, international tour, followed by a year's run in Islington.

In early 1994, the show reached Broadway's Orpheum, where it won the Drama Desk Award and an Obie. It remained in that theater for 21 years, moving off-Broadway last spring only because a gas explosion two doors down created unhealthy environmental issues - including, the company alleges, an increase in the local rat population. Talk about a gritty work of theater.

It's easy to describe Stomp but difficult to convey the excitement of seeing it performed live. A cast of eight to a dozen dancers create energetic music, mostly by beating the unholy hell out of objects that aren't drums. From flicking cigarette lighters to smashing two garbage lids together, the Stomp company finds ways to make inanimate objects sing and shout. Stomp has been performed at the Sydney Opera House, with Muppets on Sesame Street; in a 1997 HBO musical documentary; in a 2002 IMAX film called Pulse: A Stomp Odyssey; and for the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

I had the memorable pleasure of seeing Stomp in New York's West Village in 2003. Its theater was surprisingly intimate, with a gritty urban lot of a set. It was the kind of place where we felt we might get mugged inside the theater. Once the show started, however, I found the thrill of its heartbeat and showmanship undeniable. The "Stompers," as they call themselves, are not only drummers and dancers but also gifted actors. In that way, the show is much like a Blue Man Group performance, where a split second's hesitation might make the difference between noise pollution and an emotional epiphany. The cast rehearses like crazy, a necessity for performers who face enormous physical challenges every night, not to mention frequent injuries. Some scenes resemble fight choreography more than they do the usual Broadway fare.

Acts get switched out all the time, though, so it won't just be the performers who're different when the touring company hits local stages this weekend. The show I saw was phenomenal. Yours, I suspect, will be even better.

STOMP, 3 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 21, Pantages Theater, 901 Broadway, Tacoma, $29-$85, 253.591.5890, broadwaycenter.org

STOMP, 7:30 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 22, The Washington Center for the Performing Arts, 512 Washington St. SE, Olympia, $28-$87, 360.753.8585, washingtoncenter.org