He’s Tapped Into What He Loves Best : Dance: Van Porter got happy feet after seeing the man who would become his mentor perform eight years ago.

As a teen-ager, Van Porter called tap-dancing “sissified.” Only eight years later, he’s one of the field’s rising stars.

What turned everything around?

An electrifying performance by the Third Generation Steps, an acrobatic tap troupe led by tap master Maceo Anderson.

“It blew me away,” Porter says, “because the audience loved it, I loved it, they got a standing ovation, and there was so much excitement that I knew right then that that’s what I wanted to do.”

In fact, immediately after the show, Porter rushed backstage, arranged for lessons with Anderson, who was one of the original Four Step Brothers tap masters, and launched a career that continues to impress audiences and critics.

Porter is one of several prominent tappers lined up for the Southern California Tap Festival, at Orange Coast College this Saturday through July 29.

Classes in technique, choreography, repertory, improvisation and music for tap are among those scheduled. “Essence of Rhythm,” a performance July 29 at the college’s Robert B. Moore Theatre, will feature Porter, Dianne Walker of Boston, Billy Siegenfeld of Chicago, Fred Strickler, a soloist with Los Angeles’ Rhapsody in Taps, and that troupe’s artistic director, Linda Sohl-Donnell, who organized the second biennial festival in association with Orange Coast College.

A “Change of Pace Day” on Tuesday will include classes in funk-style tap (to be taught by Porter) as well as flamenco and East Indian tap, an archival video presentation and “Current Trends” and “Historical Perspectives” panel discussions with such tap veterans as Los Angeles’ Fayard Nicholas of the famed Nicholas Brothers and Glenn Turnbull of Corona del Mar.

“This year we tried to offer a comprehensive festival where students, teachers and performers aren’t just coming to learn tap steps,” Sohl-Donnell said, “but to be exposed to a wide variety of tap styles and artistry and to see what people are doing creatively with tap now.”

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Porter’s tap style has roots in “roller disco skating,” he said, a dancing-skating hybrid that Maceo Anderson capitalized on by asking Porter to perform it. After taking in that fateful show by the Third Generation Steps, Porter moved at 17 from his native Portsmouth, Va., to Las Vegas, where Anderson taught.

“Maceo was very good at taking what you had and making it into something that can be used on stage,” said Porter, 25, in a phone interview from his New York City home. “He liked what I did, so I skated on a few programs.”

Porter has since dropped his wheels, but not the pyrotechnic flash style that Anderson passed on. The form involves acrobatics, wing steps--the dancer appears to throw both feet sideways out from under himself--big arm movements “and just basic excitement,” Porter said.

Audience rapport is part of it too, and Porter loves to communicate from the stage: “Like I’ll say, ‘You all like that one?’ Then I’ll say ‘I like it too!’ ”

After four years with Anderson, Porter teamed with former Third Generation Steps member Ivory Wheeler. As the Rhythm Kings, they won nine preliminary heats to make it to national finals on the “Star Search” television show. They lost that contest, but soon after Porter aced an audition for the 1989 movie “Tap,” starring Gregory Hines. He danced in the background, but the job precipitated another turning point.

“That was a great experience for me,” Porter said, “because I met many great tap dancers, including a guy by the name of Jimmy Slyde, and my life started to change totally around.”

Porter had been contemplating quitting tap. He wasn’t content being confined to the chorus, his position in the musical “Black and Blue” on Broadway. But Slyde told him not to give it up, introduced him to improvisation and taught him more about the difference between technical proficiency and artistry.

“You can take a shuffle,” Porter said, “and make it just a shuffle, like it’s worth nothing, or you can take your body and lean to the side a little bit or forward maybe and it sings. I call it singing with the step, feeling it.”

Tap master Slyde also became a father figure, and Porter said they remain close.

“I can go to him with any situation and he seems to give me great wisdom and knowledge. Every time I do a show, I first mention Maceo as being my mentor, then I give acknowledgment to Jimmy Slyde for sharing his guiding light with me and letting me take it out on my own.”

These days, Porter’s style incorporates certain highly contemporary idioms, drawing from hip-hop, funk, salsa and samba dance. Even kung fu movies provide inspiration, he said.

The martial-art form “has moves and poses that look like dancing, so sometimes I’ll do some kind of a rhythm and come out hitting one of those poses.”

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Tap doesn’t have the box-office draw it did when Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers graced the silver screen, but Porter, who performed for President Clinton during the 1991 Kennedy Center Honors, keeps busy with festivals and performances around the world.

“I travel all over the place and I see everybody from young to old doing it,” he said. “Once you get started, it’s hard to stop.”

* Southern California Tap Festival runs Saturday through July 29 at Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. “Essence of Rhythm,” a performance, will be presented July 29 at the campus’s Robert B. Moore Theatre at 8 p.m. Admission is $10-$12 in advance and $15 at the door. An archival video presentation will be held Tuesday from 3-4:30 p.m. followed by a “Current Trends” panel discussion from 4:30-6 p.m. An “Historical Perspectives” panel discussion will be held July 29 from 3:30-5 p.m. Admission to each is $5. Master classes open to the public, with Fayard Nicholas, Leonard Reed and Harriet Brown, will be held July 29 from 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. $15 per class. (714) 432-5880 or (714) 838-3318.