Fresh Fish--and Fresh Dancing

STUDIO CITY —  It’s twilight and soothing jazz mixes with the din of voices coming from across the crowded tables.

Talk soon fades. Heads turn. All eyes are drawn to the frenetic steps of three tap dancers whose rapid-fire clicks fill the room with the intensity of marching infantry.

But this isn’t a supper club--it’s a sushi bar, tucked into a mini-mall with a nail salon, a carpet store and a fast-food chicken joint.

Sushi on Tap seems like an unlikely setting for a burgeoning dance scene. Yet here--amid the neatly arranged sake bottles, hunks of octopus and Pacific yellowtail--is what tappers call one of the best spots in Southern California to catch up with their contemporaries and show off their spins, stomps, slides and shuffles.

“It’s one of the only places around that provides a forum for a tap dancer to improvise,” said Denise Scheerer, a Valley Village resident and professional tap dance teacher. “It’s also great for a meal.”

Scheerer and her dance partners, Becky Twitchell and Hiroshi Hama, are regulars, appearing every other Saturday at Sushi on Tap.

Their shows, at 8 and 9:30 p.m., typically kick off with choreographed numbers before giving way to dance improvisation.

Like any artist introducing new material to an audience, these dancers may borrow from the steps they’ve practiced or simply lose themselves in a groove.

Those who stop in at the Studio City establishment say it’s one of those unique spots in Los Angeles to which you have to bring friends and colleagues. Otherwise, they might not believe it exists.

“The atmosphere is fun,” said Silver Lake costume designer Isabella Braga, who was dining with friends Josie Gammell and Monica Castro. “It gets everybody into the mood.”

A Magical Vision

As the set winds down, the stage area fills with dancers ranging from those with a few years’ experience to Broadway-caliber talent. It’s the tap equivalent of a jam session.

“For a tap dancer, these times are definitely magical,” said Twitchell, 21, who first strapped on her tap shoes at age 3 and has toured the country with a Los Angeles-based tap company.

“It’s like being in a room with musicians,” she said, “except the music is made with our feet.”

Tap luminaries Gregory Hines and Savion Glover have been known to stop in for sushi before hitting the floor that restaurant owner Kiyo Sone had built specially for tap.

A native of Osaka, Japan, Sone first envisioned opening a club with entertainment including jazzy music, big bands and tap dancers like those he saw in the movie, “The Cotton Club.”

The film about the legendary Harlem nightspot helped fuel his curiosity about tap, but Sone said he was frustrated to find there were no dance studios nearby.

So when he and his wife came to Los Angeles in 1991, the couple immediately signed up for tap lessons at the old Joe Tremaine dance studio in North Hollywood and later at the nearby Debbie Reynolds dance studio.

Always the visionary, Sone still longs to open a classic New York City jazz club. But when it became clear he couldn’t afford to realize his grandiose vision, he decided to combine his love of tap with something he knew: sushi.

Using the money saved from working at restaurants back home, he and his wife, Ryoko, opened Sushi on Tap two years ago at 11056 Ventura Blvd., between Tujunga and Vineland avenues.

The restaurant is a hybrid nightclub-sushi bar.

During the week, it’s a place for office workers and studio types to huddle with co-workers and business clients around small square tables.

But weekends lure the club set, a more casual crowd that dresses in jeans, T-shirts and leather jackets for the tap shows on Friday and Saturday nights.

The tap floor, which can accommodate perhaps a dozen dancers, is in a corner of the restaurant away from the door. The “sprung” wood floor is slightly elevated, to ease the pounding on a dancer’s body.

A wall near the restaurant’s entrance is a paean to tap greats. Besides Hines, one steps back through nearly a century of dance history with the stylized images of Sammy Davis Jr., the Nicholas Brothers, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.

Joining the Show

House specialties immortalize tap steps, including the “Shuffle Roll,” a combination of salmon, shrimp, avocado and smelt eggs, as well as the “Over the Top Roll,” a creation stuffed with tuna, yellowtail, whitefish, salmon, shrimp and snow crab.

Sone, a goateed, bespectacled 38-year-old, usually spends his hours behind the counter patting rice on pressed seaweed and loading them up with fish and vegetables.

But underneath this soft-spoken, workmanlike exterior is an irreverent and exuberant showman. And at no time is that more evident than during birthdays.

At the appointed moment, Sone and two sushi chefs rush from behind the counter, their tap shoes gracefully slapping the floor.

The chefs cut a swath to the back tables for their serenade.

Meanwhile, Ryoko Sone--normally the quiet fixture behind the cash register--belts out an accompaniment from the stage on the electronic keyboard.

Meeting a Legend

Birthdays always are a kick, she said. But the most memorable time at the restaurant took place about six months after it opened in 1997.

That night, as the story goes, an actress friend brought Gregory Hines by.

He gave the stunned audience a taste of his talents with a brief three-minute show.

Ryoko said her husband was surprised and a little nervous when meeting one of his tap-dance idols, whom he had seen in “Tap,” the 1989 movie about a jewel thief who discovers his tap-dancing roots.

They spent time talking tap. Her husband was very impressed, she said.

These days, Kiyo Sone takes the attention in stride, proud of the scene he helped create in the San Fernando Valley. He hopes to open another tap restaurant in New York City.

“I’ve always wanted to open a restaurant in New York,” he said. “The people who fly in from the city love it here. People appreciate art there, especially jazz music. Hopefully, our next Sushi on Tap will be in Midtown or Soho.”