Dancing through a classical painting

HONG KONG — As a group of dancers wearing turquoise costumes and towering hair buns moved to a traditional Chinese melody, they appeared as if they had just stepped out of an ancient scroll painting of a Chinese landscape.

The Poetic Dance: The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting, a dance drama presented by Beijing-based China Oriental Performing Arts Group, made its debut in Hong Kong on Friday, igniting the enthusiasm of dance drama fans.

It tells a story closely related to A Panorama of Mountains and Rivers housed in the Palace Museum in Beijing. The masterpiece of traditional Chinese landscape painting is characterized by its use of blue and green. It has a history of nearly 1,000 years and is said to have been painted by the 18-year-old genius Wang Ximeng during the Song Dynasty (960-1279).