AT THE END of director Takeshi Kitano's hit movie Zatoichi (2003), after the eponymous blind swordsman has cut and diced his way through a village full of mobsters and renegades, the story takes a surreal turn: the entire cast bursts into a rousing tap-dance on wooden clogs to the sound of pounding drums. The startling finale is a melee of cultural styles - two parts old-style Broadway musical, one-part Riverdance, salted with allusions to traditional Japanese popular theatre. Listen closely and you can almost hear the sound of a new dance genre being stomped out on the stage: Nippon-tap. Choreographed by Hideyuki Higuchi, who will bring his blend of tap, rap and theatre to Hong Kong this week, the scene is easily the most memorable in the movie and helped revive Kitano's film career after a couple of flops. It didn't do Higuchi any harm, either. 'I've been very busy,' he says. A lithe, boyish 38-year-old, Higuchi has dancing in his blood. His Osaka-born father was a choreographer who switched to tap after falling under the spell of Hollywood's Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; his mother was a leggy, can-can dancer. Together, they opened a tap-dance studio in Tokyo. As the only child of this fleet-footed couple, Higuchi was soon dancing himself and by 16 was already a seasoned pro, working as a teacher and choreographer. In the early 1990s, he made his way to New York to study with one of the greatest tap-dancer at the time, the late Gregory Hines. For a young, ambitious dancer who had grown up worshipping the likes of Sammy Davis Jnr (Hines' mentor) and Henry LeTang, it was a dream start. But Higuchi says he struggled to find his own identity in the crowded Manhattan scene. 'I loved black culture and the whole black look,' he says. 'You know, the Afro hair, the dark skin, clothes and so on. So I mimicked it. And a black dancer friend came up to me one day and said, 'You look weird, man. Who are you?' He told me it wasn't good to copy in this business and that I had to develop my own style.' Higuchi had already drifted away from the old-fashioned, top-hat Broadway style of his parents towards so-called rhythm tap - a more complex, improvised form rooted in the history of black suffering. 'Though their hands were chained as slaves, their feet could still move.' But he desperately wanted an Asian look and, more importantly, rhythm. Back in Japan, using the stage name Hideboh, he formed four-man dance troupe STRiPES in 1998, incorporating contemporary elements he loved such as funk and club music. 'It was a struggle with some successes and lots of failures. I kept asking myself, 'What is Japanese about this?' The answer finally came with the call from Kitano, an unlikely blend of working-class comedian and Renaissance man who has directed some of Japan's most acclaimed recent movies. Kitano is also an amateur tap dancer and had seen Higuchi on one of his TV shows. Incorporating a distinctive Japanese look - Samurai top-knots, kimonos and geta wooden clogs - the stomping dance number in Zatoichi, based on the pounding rhythms of traditional taiko drums and seasoned with three-stringed shamisen, was the climax of Higuchi's search for an Asian aesthetic to this distinctly American art-form. The popularity of the movie and Kitano's follow-up Takeshis', which also includes a dance scene, has boosted Higuchi's profile and helped fuel a minor tap-dance boom in Tokyo, where youngsters in Yoyogi park - always something of a bellwether for the city's bewildering cultural shifts - can be found on weekends practising their steps. Needless to say, Higuchi is delighted with the outcome - and with the reaction of his mother, who still teaches dance. 'She was very proud of the movie. She and my dad both grew up in the 1950s with movies - Gene Kelly, Singing in the Rain and all the rest - and they love all that stuff. It's a kind of dream for dancers to leave behind something on screen.' Higuchi's eight-person troupe, which has now added two female dancers, will be showing off their skills in their forthcoming Hong Kong show Funk-a-Step, billed as a 'blend of theatricality, hardcore rhythm tap, African drumming and a decidedly Tokyo aesthetic'. It's the result of two decades of dance evolution. 'The public never sees the hard work,' says Higuchi, who is busy studying Cantonese ahead of the trip. 'We haven't decided what we'll perform, but we'll definitely be doing a rhythm session, which will allow the audience to take part in a dance, as a shared experience. 'I don't think Hong Kong audiences will have seen or experienced anything like this. For Japanese audiences, you have to cram the performance with ideas, but we're going to opt for something more simple and pure in China. The great thing about dancing is that you can take it anywhere and it will be understood, despite the difference in languages.' But he warns people not to expect another Riverdance. 'When I saw Michael Flatley I was blown away by the showmanship and amazing music. But our style is very different, not quite as demonstrative. 'We're Asians after all. That's what I'm trying to do. Develop something distinctly Japanese and Asian than can speak to the rest of the world.' STRiPES Funk-a-Step, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Studio Theatre, Thu-Sat, 8pm; Tuen Mun Town Hall, Aug 27, 8pm, HK$120, HK$180. Inquiries: 2268 7323
