And then there’s the new dance tribute.

The Odyssey of Little Dragon is the brainchild of Dominic Wong Dick-man, assistant artistic director of Hong Kong’s City Contemporary Dance Company, who developed the show with dramaturge Patrick Lee (no relation).

It uses “be water” as a recurring motif, according to Patrick Lee, an award-winning Chinese-American journalist whose day job is a producer on 60 Minutes for CBS News and who has worked both in Hollywood and a New York community theatre group.

“One day, after a heavy rainstorm in New York, I went home and saw water dripping down from the ceiling. I called the [building superintendent] and he said, there’s no telling where the source was because water could go anywhere. That’s when I realised what Bruce Lee meant. ‘Be water’ meant the ability to go anywhere,” he says during a visit to Hong Kong.

His personal interest in Bruce Lee springs from shared experiences –like the actor, he moved from Hong Kong to the United States when he was a teenager, and was frustrated in Hollywood. Patrick Lee struggled to get meaningful work after leaving film school, just as Bruce Lee had a hard time getting meaningful roles outside Chinese-language cinema.

He also appreciates how Bruce Lee single-handedly reversed the Orientalist stereotype of the weak, feminine Chinese man and established a global following for Hong Kong kung fu films.

While researching for an earlier CBS documentary, Patrick Lee realised with sadness that Bruce Lee’s status in Hong Kong stood in sharp contrast to his obscurity in the US during his lifetime.

“I was so sure that I’d find footage of his funeral in Seattle in the CBS archives, which is enormous. But I couldn’t find anything of Bruce Lee at all. He was a nobody in the US and his fame and recognition in the West was achieved only after his death,” he says. “In Hong Kong, however, he was a superstar.

When he died at the age of 32, huge crowds came out to mourn him [in Hong Kong]. In Seattle, his funeral was a very small gathering and there was no coverage.”

The two funerals will be the starting point of The Odyssey of Little Dragon, which Patrick Lee says will mostly relate the late star’s life through the eyes of his widow, Linda.

“I was in touch with Linda while I wrote the show’s structure and I have always been interested in their relationship. People think they already know everything there is to know about Bruce Lee and so I deliberately chose a different kind of storytelling,” he says.

The dance drama will be wrapped around Linda’s memory of Lee, as well as dream sequences. In one scene, Bruce Lee has a eureka moment about the power of water while watching buns steam in a China Town restaurant. In another, the martial arts legend and his younger self touch their nunchucks, crossing time and space, to signify the merging of his Eastern and Western identities.

Hong Kong is a fitting setting for The Odyssey of Little Dragon, he says, not just because it is his and Bruce Lee’s birthplace, but also because the city has always been where East meets West.

“I wasn’t interested in the project just because he was a famous figure, but because his life was uniquely relevant to an Asian-American’s experience,” he says.

The music and live accompaniment will be provided by Ng Yin, a local singer, sheng player and composer, and Bruce Lee will be played by various dancers on stage.

The Odyssey of Little Dragon, City Contemporary Dance Company, Sha Tin Town Hall, August 16-18. Tickets are now available on Urbtix.