The story follows a nine-year-old girl who is feeling nervous about starting at a new school. Finding solace in an old book about dinosaurs borrowed from a teacher, the girl goes on a magical and unforgettable adventure, making new friends along the way.

Also on board is 59 Productions, which created the Hockney exhibition, the video design at the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony and the digital projections in War Horse – a production at the National Theatre in London, England.

“This show brings together lots of different disciplines. There’s the music, the choreography and the story, but there’s also the physical set design inspired by the idea of a pop-up book,” says Mark Grimmer, the scriptwriter for Sam and a director at 59 Productions, which he co-founded.

“When you go into the theatre, what you see is this large-scale book, both a physical piece of scenery and a canvas for projection mapping. It very much integrates the arts and technology to bring the story to life, which is thrilling because it’s so rich and there’s so much opportunity to create new worlds.”

What is interesting, Grimmer tells the Post, is that Sam is a brand new concept compared to pre-existing titles such as The Nutcracker, where the music and story already have well-established foundations.

This means there is little wiggle room for creativity, as the design team only has to respond to the text or the director’s preconceived vision.

“We started from scratch,” he adds of Sam and her Amazing Book of Dinosaurs. “It was a completely blank sheet of paper, which meant that the whole production grew as a brilliantly multidisciplinary collaborative process.

“Nico [Muhly] approached the writing of the music a bit like he would do with a film score. We provided him with the story, along with some design sketches. His rough pieces of music and demos were then sent to Septime [Webre], who workshopped them with the dancers.”

For Sam and her Amazing Book of Dinosaurs, 59 Productions is responsible for the script as well as designing the set, video, lighting and sound. When it comes to juggling so many technical and technological aspects, in Grimmer’s words, it was “a difficult but sensitive balancing act”.

He adds: “It’s all about balance and where the focus needs to be at particular moments. There are times in the show that we really want people to focus on the beautiful dance taking place on stage and the music, not looking at whizzy visuals going on in the background.”

Some of 59 Productions’ designers have landed in Hong Kong ahead of the show’s opening to finalise and fine-tune details such as the pacing, the placement of imagery in the stage picture and how the visuals respond to the dancers’ movements – all of which require them to be on site.

“Normally, we would all spend time in a room together, but we’re only getting to meet each other face to face right about now for rehearsals,” says Grimmer. “Developing the show remotely has been challenging, but ultimately, it’s shown that it’s possible to make very interesting international collaborations through technology.

“It’s for an audience coming in, watching human beings performing on stage – that’s where the emotional power is. Although we use a lot of digital technology in our work, we’re focused on creating live experiences that have an emotional resonance.”

Sam and her Amazing Book of Dinosaurs by Hong Kong Ballet and 59 Productions (UK), Grand Theatre at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, 10 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. 7.30pm on July 14; 2.30pm and 7.30pm on July 15 and 16.