Jefferson Center’s streak of sold-out Star City Performance Series concerts ended Thursday night.

But series-capping artist Angelique Kidjo made sure that even if the house was less than full, her night on the Shaftman Performance Hall stage would be the biggest party of the bunch.

The Grammy Award-winning singer and her band of bouncy syncopation masters proved that even if most audience members can’t understand the lyrics, the common languages of music and dance will carry any night.

The past seven shows in the Jeff’s signature series had sold out, venue employees said. This time, the 938-capacity hall held about 750. There was little excuse to miss this party, though.

And Kidjo had warned the crowd early in the show that it would have to put in some work.

“When you come to my concert, you have to have fun ... you’ve gotta dance,” she told the crowd. “Free yourselves from those chairs ... Don’t mind what anybody thinks about the way you dance.”

Performing old and new jewels of Afro-beat music, Kidjo eventually cajoled a big pack of dancers to get in front of the stage. Then she invited them onstage for a lengthy, multicultural dance session. At least 50 audience members were onstage by the end, shimmying away in what looked like a dance-off.

It took a Rolling Stones song to get things rolling. As Kidjo jokingly chided the audience for not dancing, a woman shouted for “Gimme Shelter,” which Kidjo covers on her latest CD, the Grammy-winning “Djin Djin.” She agreed, provided she see some footwork from the crowd.

“So now we’ll pay tribute to the fact that the Rolling Stones realized that without the blues, there’s not rock ‘n’ roll,” she said. “So I’m going to take it back to where rock ‘n’ roll started — Africa!”

Not that almost every other song wasn’t groove-worthy. It was hard to sit still on the stuttery shuffle of “Djin Djin,” the 16th-note percolation of “Papa” and the bass-guitar driven instrumental, “Itche Koutche,” but people managed to do it.

Maybe the crowd was mesmerized by Kidjo herself, who can dance like a dervish, and whose resonant, powerful voice reveals a range of emotions to anyone who listens, even when the words were native to her homeland, Benin. Her band was as loose a beat syndicate as you’ll hear, and constantly propulsive.