PORTLAND — Portland Ovations will present “India Jazz Suites,” a collaboration between Emmy Award-winning tap-dancer Jason Samuels Smith and Pandit Chitresh Das, India’s foremost Kathak master, on Wednesday, Nov. 16.

Accompanying Smith and Das in this energetic display of dance combining rhythm and improvisation will be three top Indian musicians and the Marcus Shelby Jazz Trio.

Kathak is the classical dance of north India. “India Jazz Suites” features incredible speed and power, grace and beauty, and epic storytelling.

Smith, one of the world’s fastest, most explosive tap-dancers, has won an Emmy and an American Choreography Award. In 2007, he was honored with the Gregory Hines Humanitarian Award for his promotion of dance for youth in south Los Angeles and throughout the country.

Das has received numerous awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. A child prodigy, he has become one of the most compelling and far-reaching artists to emerge from modern India.

Ovations Offstage will present a lecture at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15, at and in collaboration with the Portland Museum of Art. Das and Smith will discuss how their collaboration of dance transcends continents, generations, cultures and communities. Alicia Anstead, editor-in-chief of the national magazine Inside Arts, will moderate the discussion.

“India Jazz Suites” will be presented at 7:30 p.m. at Hannaford Hall on the University of Southern Maine campus. For tickets, $28, call PortTix at 842-0800, visit the box office window at Merrill Auditorium or log on to www.portlandovations.org.