Come and meet those dancing feet… no, not the tapping toes of the classic musical 42nd Street, but a different street entirely in Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe’s world premiere tap dance revue Syncopated Avenue.

The show is the brainchild of the troupe’s artistic director Nate Jacobs, spurred on by his meeting several years ago with a young dancer named Lamont Brown while both were working for Norwegian Cruise Line. Jacobs was helping create smaller shows to accompany the ship’s mainstage performances, which was where Brown was busy tapping his heart out. 

“When I see amazing performers, I file it in my head,” says Jacobs. “We talked a couple of times. I said, ‘I would love to do something with you,’ and then three or four years went by.” When Jacobs did finally reach back out to Brown, the idea of doing a tap dance show immediately came to mind. “That’s something we have not done a whole lot of at Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe,” says Jacobs, who also collaborated on the show with his brother Michael, a semi-retired lawyer who first introduced Jacobs to theater. “I wanted to do a piece to pay homage to tap—the perseverance, the history,” says Jacobs. “Syncopated Avenue speaks about holding on to your heritage and those essential parts of life in the dance world. Tap was born out of African dance and rhythms.”

The show centers on a retired tap dancer who opens a dance studio and then finds it threatened by gentrification. Enter a younger dancer (played by Brown), who is dreading what he sees as the dying off of the art of tap. The way Jacobs puts it, “Their meeting creates an opportunity for both of their dreams and aspirations to come true.”

The show’s music—a mix of soul, jazz and Broadway-style show tunes— was crafted by Jacobs and New York-based music director and arranger Louis Danowsky. The choreography was designed by Brown, a graduate of the Dance Conservatory at New York’s American Musical and Dramatic Academy who has been seen in the first national tour of Funny Girl and a rock musical adaptation of the 2004 movie Mean Girls. He’s also toured with 42nd Street.

Older audiences may tend to think fondly of decades-old movies and musicals when they recall the heyday of tap. But, Jacobs says, “even for people from the African American diaspora, a lot of young people are not exposed to that art form now. They need to know and appreciate the masters, like Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, Savion Glover, the Nicholas Brothers. Tap deserves to be looked at again.”

Since not many of the troupe’s local actors are experienced with tap, for the first time, Jacobs traveled to New York and held in-person auditions to find dancers for the show. “We’ve got some authentic people who have been studying tap all their lives” to fill out the 12-member cast, Jacobs says. “I’m excited about the new artists who have never worked with us before.”

Jacobs says Syncopated Avenue “starts off with African history and metamorphizes into the tap of today. It’s a wonderful history lesson as well as entertaining. I think the audience will be blown away by it.”

Syncopated Avenue is onstage at Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe April 16-May 25. For more info and tickets, call (941) 366-1505 or visit westcoastblacktheatre.org.