New London - When a show is as much an ensemble piece as "Stomp," you know something's up when a single performer is greeted upon her entrance with a round of applause.

That's what happened when Kris Lee turned up onstage Sunday at the Garde Arts Center. Lee, you see, just happens to have spent her early childhood in New London.

She started drumming when she was a student at the Edgerton Elementary School, as Garde Executive Director Steve Sigel told the "Stomp" audience. She took music lessons at Caruso's. She studied tap with the late dance teacher Louise Neistat and performed with Neistat's dance group on the very Garde stage she returned to Sunday.

Lee moved to Colchester when she was 9 or 10, as she told The Day last year, and graduated from Bacon Academy in 2004.

And now? Now she's touring the U.S. with "Stomp" after doing the same on the European tour and off-Broadway.

She's certainly got that "Stomp" swagger: a downtown-hip vibe, an intense energy and an obvious joy in performing. And, of course, she possesses a killer sense of rhythm, whether flicking her fingers on a matchbox or swinging from a harness two stories up while banging on a wall of detritus that looks as though it all could have been pulled from the local landfill.

Indeed, in "Stomp," one man's trash is another man's drum set. Whole numbers are constructed around the rhythmic possibilities that can be generated by using just plastic and brown paper bags. Or dust pans. Or garbage cans.

I mean, they use everything but the kitchen sink. No, wait! They use the kitchen sink, too. Four of the male performers march out wearing sinks draped from around their necks; they makes sounds by, for instance, banging on glasses as they drain of water to create different notes.

As you can tell, there's a wonderful sense of humor in "Stomp," which was created and directed by Brits Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas. It's a 90-minute, no intermission, wordless paean to percussion - and to creativity. Two decades after it debuted in America, "Stomp" still feels fresh and funky.

Some classic "Stomp" sequences remain. One number focuses on the simplicity of a broom, with the distinctive noises it makes from the brush of its bristles and the tap of its handle. Another goes for thundering beats and Godzilla theatricality when some of the guys clomp out with 55-gallon drums attached to the bottoms of their shoes.

Then, too, there are newer pieces.

Performers wear huge inner tubes around their waists, attached via suspenders, and thud on them with sticks.

While rhythm is obviously the driving force in "Stomp," the creative team never forgets visual theatricality. My favorite: When the cast clicks and snaps Zippo lighters, it's on a dark stage, generating a subtle but cool light show.

Considering how the performers create complicated, syncopated beats just by clapping their hands, mere applause from the sold-out audience might seem, well, underachieving. But the crowd applauded anyway - often and enthusiastically.

k.dorsey@theday.com