The tunes from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's famous ballet The Nutcracker are usually a sign that Christmas is on its way. But this week, the pieces form the backdrop to the most important Chinese festival, in Hong Kong Ballet's Firecracker.
The troupe's spin on the famous show reinvents the characters by transplanting them into a new setting - 1960s Hong Kong - and moving the timing to Lunar New Year. It promises to take the audience on a tour of the city's past using a mix of modern dance and ballet moves that conjure up people and events from history.
The show is the brainchild of Hong Kong choreographer Yuri Ng. He came up with the idea for a ballet to mark the festival when he was a dancer in the 1980s. A member of a ballet company overseas, he'd often perform the perennial Christmas show away from his family.
'I had performed the classical Nutcracker outside Hong Kong many times,' Ng says. 'I thought: 'Why I don't do something new?' The Nutcracker is a popular show in the West over Christmas. I thought we might actually have an equivalent for a major Chinese festival.'
In Ng's Firecracker, the spotlight shifts from Clara, the lead role in the original, to the elderly uncle who buys her the nutcracker. He travels to his past, encountering events and people that form his memories.
The dancers combine modern dance elements with classical ballet in their portrayals of the movie stars from black and white films, visiting royalty and participants in parades that marked 1960s Hong Kong.
Ng says the project presented many challenges, from coming up with moves suited both his storyline and Tchaikovsky's classic music, to finding time-appropriate set pieces.