HAVE you ever seen a European in a cheong sam?'' composer Noel Quinlan asked Lo King-man, vice chairman of the Urban Council and adviser to Quinlan's soon-to-be staged music and dance extravaganza, Tales From The Middle Kingdom.
''That's what I don't want to look like,'' explained Quinlan, when asked by the professional arts patron what he was expecting in the way of advice.
Although a resident of Hong Kong for the past 25 years, Australian-born Quinlan is acutely aware that he is treading a fine line with Tales From The Middle Kingdom.
In effect, he is taking Chinese folklore and traditional music and giving it a Western, modern appeal.
As author, producer, composer and music director, he has woven traditional stories into a series of fast paced sequences of modern dance - performed by choreographer Willy Tsao's two dance companies, City Contemporary Dance Company and the Guangdong Modern Dance Company - and set them to a combination of traditional singing and music performed live and hi-tech music, which will be delivered via a digital surround sound system.
In many ways it is a first for Hong Kong and, Quinlan hopes, a new force in entertainment which will help catapult the local industry into the international spotlight.