Fancy footwork from the East and the West come together in “India Jazz Suites,” performed by the Chitresh Das Dance Company and American tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith. Chitresh Das is a leading practitioner of Kathak, one of six major classical dance traditions in India. His company will be at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts to perform “Jazz Suites” on Friday, April 5, as well as “Sita Haran,” a dramatization drawn from the Sanskrit epic the “Ramayana,” on Saturday, April 6. “A kathaka is a storyteller, like the minstrels and the bards of the ancient times,” explains Pandit Das — the honorific title recognizes his status as a teacher — in a recent phone interview.

“All over India, they would wander from town to town and tell stories, just like in medieval times in Europe.” But where a medieval minstrel would tell stories in song, Kathak uses a movement vocabulary that focuses on fast-moving feet. Dancers perform without shoes, but strings of bells wrapped around the ankles amplify the percussive effect.

Das has been collaborating with Samuels Smith for the past eight years, after a foot-stomping jam session brought them together at the American Dance Festival in Durham, N.C. But Das’ interest in cross-cultural collaboration dates to his teenage years, when he saw flamenco dancer José Greco in the film “Around the World in 80 Days.”

Flamenco is another percussive, foot-centric dance tradition, and watching the Spanish style made Das want to explore the similarities and differences, which he has done in many performances with flamenco dancer Antonio Hidalgo.

“Both (Hidalgo and Samuels Smith) had to admit that the Indian classical tradition, especially rhythmically, is very deep and mathematical, extremely complex and unique. So they are fascinated with that. But me, I’m fascinated with the flamenco usage of the feet and the tap usage of the feet. How do they make that kind of sound? So that has intensified my practices in a very unique way.”