IMAGINE a dynamic eight-piece ensemble of percussionists, actors and singers creating rhythms from such unlikely sources as the sweep of push brooms, the crash of dust bins, the popping of plastic bags or the snapping of cigarette lighters.
Add inspired choreography which owes as much to a street-fight as it does to an MGM musical and you get an inkling as to what Yes/No People's Stomp will be like.
''It's about experimenting with sound. It's about making music from anything - out of your body, out of anything that comes to hand, anything but a musical instrument. And it's about people working together and making something from nothing. I think that's the general feeling an audience seems to take away from the show,'' said Steve McNichols, co-director of the British percussion group.
Stomp is the somewhat crazed and inordinately clever rhythmic theatre extravaganza that he and Yes/No People co-director/performer Luke Cresswell are bringing to the Hongkong Arts Festival.
''A lot of things that have influenced us come from American movies of the Depression era, from seeing hoofers in films like Stormy Weather. But when we work we try to be contemporary in terms of the rhythms we use,'' said McNichols.
It is a sensibility derived from years of experience. As members of the early-'80s busking band Pookiesnackenburger, McNichols and Cresswell developed a working knowledge of the ins and outs of pick-up performance - a reliance on ideas and talent, and not the flash of technology.
From these street-wise beginnings, the group went on to release two albums as well as command its own television series on Britain's Channel 4.
