Say tap dance and many people will reply Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Even today an archetypal tapper might be thought of as a dapper little man in top hat and tails or a foxy femme in fishnets and high-heels, whirling a cane. Tap can be elegant, but it can also be camp, brassy and very, very showbiz. It’s hard to be ‘street’ about two leather shoes capped with metal.

So, it is quite unusual to stumble across three young male dancers set on funking up tap here in Hong Kong. Tap Ensemble’s Anthony Suen, Kat Wong (Ki) and Ken Kwok are rehearsing in a small, mirrored studio in Wong Tai Sin, wearing baggy black pants and oversized T-shirts, looking more hip hop that toffed-up tap.

Tap dancing locally is rare, with ballet and Chinese dance classes overshadowing its jaunty steps, and just a handful of musicals devoted to its rhythmic clatter. So studying musical theatre dance at HKAPA was a late introduction for the boys but in a few lessons they were hooked. “[When] my feet are moving fast, it’s very cool, very exciting – that rhythm is the words I wanna say,” says Suen, Ensemble’s unofficial spokesman, whose down-to-earth chat comes with a ready smile.

But they graduated in different years and didn’t form the company until long after school. By that time, each had followed a solo career – for instance, Kwok, Ensemble’s oldest and tallest member, landed a contract with Hong Kong Dance Company, and left for France to study jazz. It took a tap-jam session to actually bring the three together. Stirred by the synergy and adrenaline of six feet in rhythm, and realising dancing solo would be impossible (Suen: “Even if you are a really good tapper, you still cannot earn your living”), the friends were soon making plans to form a company. Tap Ensemble was born in 2002.

Now in 2006, A Place for Us is the company’s first show and a move to bring the magical step-happy style to new audiences. It introduces a dream that would see the group touring and creating a platform here for numerous foreign tap dance companies. It is also a chance to dispose of tap’s Hollywood good-guy image and the big-bang showiness of Broadway musicals. Both seem outdated to these three modern tappers.

Originally tap’s roots lie in Southern America, at the feet of chained slaves who began shuffling and stomping out rhythms to accompany their singing. Travelling minstrels – comedy entertainers with distinctive blacked-up faces – adopted the style and performed it on stage. Somewhere, the slave dance crossed paths with Ireland’s traditional line dancing before Hollywood formalised and fantasised it for the big screen. A Place for Us looks back at the fusion and adds an extra storytelling dimension. “We want more space involved – rhythm and theatre,” says Suen.

Demonstrating the differences, Kwok and Suen get up to perform a musical classic – 42nd Street’s jolly, bouncing Dancing Feet. Immediately grins are plastered onto their faces as their upper bodies tense, shoulders are raised and hands flicked from the hips. Their steps in unison, the dancers travel far across the stage, shuffling top to bottom, before finishing in a flourish of jazzy kicking.

Then Ki is up, to contrast with the rhythm tap he adores. The music booms with a heavy baseline and he punches out accelerated syncopated taps, barely moving from one spot. His body is loose, his arms free to accentuate moves and add attitude. It isn’t long before the others bound onto the space, improvising, challenging Ki with steps, in a dance-off, like rapapers competing in battle. As each dancer attempts to out-do the last, steps become more intricate, more energetic and more physical and thrown together with a dash of good-natured bravado. “It’s our communication,” explains Ki later, puffing and out of breath.

Finally comes a snippet from the new show. In it, three characters each receive their first pair of tap shoes and, as the boys run in circles tapping with beaming faces, jumps, twists and splits convey the characters’ excitement and happiness. Feet become a tangled blur and the transition from pure dance to theatre dance is apparent straight away – the boys telling their vibrant story through technically challenging steps.

Ki’s main inspiration is the modernised male tap in boots and jeans of brawny Aussies Tap Dogs – they who wowed three billion watchers of Sydney’s 2000 Olympics opener. Japanese steppers Stripes are also part of a recent resurgence of tap. The four-man group practises rhythm style and tours the world with frenetic shows – they dropped into Hong Kong over the summer and represented Asia in the World Tap Dance Festival.

Perhaps the newest import is Warner Brothers’ sunshine take on tap: Happy Feet is a big budget cartoon about Mumble, a penguin tapper, which might well inspire the next generation of metal-capped shoe spinners.

But at the moment, Hong Kong tap is Tap Ensemble. Seriously understated and totally lacking show business pretension, the boys offer enthusiasm and unbridled energy. Their show is self-financed; at times it’s a struggle juggling freelancers’ paychecks with the financial demands of a major production. But the chirpy impresarios of Tap Ensemble are determined and one day Hong Kong tap will have a place of its own.