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Pushing traditional boundaries often yields unexpected results, and in some cases, an extraordinary amount of success.

Over the last four years, West African dance company Salia ni Seydou has been invited to perform in over 70 cities around the world from Taipei to Paris and New York City. Their stop in Los Angeles, lasting tonight through Feb. 8 at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, represents another opportunity to demonstrate to an ever-expanding international audience their unique blend of traditional African and contemporary dance styles.

Company co-directors Salia Sanou and Seydou Boro grew up in the artistic climate of Burkina Faso, where Salia ni Seydou is now based. Burkina Faso is a small nation near the Ivory Coast that hosts the continent’s largest craft market as well as the African equivalent of the Sundance Film Festival. In a country of diverse cultural activity, dance is a part of everyday life.

Surprisingly, the two were working nine to five jobs when they were recruited by French choreographer Mathilde Monnier for her company in Montpellier. After spending several years at the National Center of Choreography, where Monnier was artistic director, the two felt compelled to make career changes.

“We decided to dedicate our lives to dance,” they said through interpreter and tour director Suzanne Gosselin.

Salia ni Seydou, formed in 1997, has since won the Discovery Prize for Dance from Radio France International and the Audience Award for Best Production at Montreal’s International Festival of New Dance. It was recently awarded the “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres” from the French government for its outstanding contribution to French culture.

Some African audiences, however, were initially split in opinion over the group’s move away from traditional cultural dances. They called the hybridized style too western. But today in the capital city, Ouagadougou, with the blessing of the Burkina Faso government, Sanou and Boro are completing plans to open their own choreographic center. There, artists will be free to interact and experiment.

“Our goal is to explore how one can dance differently in Africa,” Sanou told The New Yorker last year.

“Figninto,” the production coming to Los Angeles, shows the striking physicality and emotional expression that has won its creators critical acclaim. Translated from the Bambara language as “blind man,” the work explores the lack of communication between people and their inability to recognize the value of those connections over the passage of time.

The piece has been seen in theaters in Africa, Europe and eastern Canada, and just last month, in Florida’s West Palm Beach. Not traditionally a hub for edgy, experimental dance, with an audience composed mostly of retirees, the coastal American community was a surprising stop on the company’s tour. Even the presenter was not terribly optimistic.

“Before the first performance,” Gosselin said, “the presenter says, ‘If they don’t like it, that’s their problem.’”

But the talents of Sanou and Boro and the rest of their company ultimately won the audience over.

“They gave them a standing ovation,” Gosselin continued. “And all the presenter could say afterward was, ‘I can’t believe it!’”