Chinese folk dance may have a history that spans more than 1,000 years, but not one full-length work can be found in its repertoire.
'There are plenty of short pieces,' says Leung Kwok-shing, assistant artistic director of the Hong Kong Dance Company (HKDC) and an expert on Chinese traditional dance. 'But there's nothing more than that. And because there are different kinds of folk dance in China, it's hard to lump individual short pieces together into a single work without it looking odd and incongruous.'
Which explains why his latest effort is one of his most innovative.
To mark the 10th anniversary of the handover next month, the HKDC will stage a full-length Chinese folk dance piece inspired by an early Song painting Qingming Shang He Tu, or Along the River During the Qingming Festival. This national treasure by Zhang Zeduan will go on display at the Hong Kong Museum of Art from Friday - also as part of the festivities.
Choreographed and directed by Leung, and written by veteran museum curator and historian Gerard Tsang Chu-chiu, Qingming Riverside is described by the troupe as a 'dance poem', because it doesn't have a storyline in the same way that a dance drama does.
It's also the first full-length Chinese folk dance piece with a clear theme. The work, which has taken Leung and Tsang two years to create, will feature choreography based on folk dance from the past and present. But although the short pieces may still be stylistically different, they all come from the same source: the Song masterpiece.