Everyone in the entertainment business knows Jingle Ma Chor-shing loves music (he was a useful drummer), is a deft hand at directing romances and a world-class cinematographer. It was only natural that the man behind box-office hits such as Summer Holiday and Tokyo Raiders would ultimately find a project that merged all three qualities. He didn't, however, expect to run into a language barrier with Cantonese.

"I loved shows like Grease and, initially, I really wanted to do a full-fledged musical," says Ma of his latest offering, Para Para Sakura. "But it just didn't sound good having the dialogue sung in Cantonese; I think the language is a little harsh. Besides, if you had a musical, I think you'd need to spend a lot of time writing the songs first."

Instead, the colourful Para Para Sakura has morphed into what Ma calls a "romantic dancing" film. Set against the Japanese dance craze of the title (para para) - which incorporates elements of traditional Japanese dance, flamenco and hip-hop and is performed macarena-like - the film follows dance instructor Sing (Aaron Kwok Fu-shing) who finds colour returning to his drab world when he meets Lok Yee (Cecilia Cheung Pak-chi). Although romance blossoms, Lok Yee returns to Japan to get married and Sing goes all-out to win her back.

The idea of using the dance craze as a fabric came to Ma after he observed the kids of Harajuku during the filming of Summer Holiday in Tokyo last year. "Almost 5,000 people were doing the dance and I thought it would be really interesting if I mixed it with a love story," says the director, who "researches" new fads with frequent visits to locations and chats with his nephews and nieces. "When I returned to Tokyo at the end of the year, I saw it again and started seriously considering it. The dance craze hadn't made it to Hong Kong yet. And I'm known as a director who catches on to new trends quickly, so why not make a movie that sets new trends?

"You have to chase trends, you know. If you move too quickly, it doesn't work because you leave the audience behind. I always thought that Hot War was too far ahead for the audience. So for my later films such as Tokyo Raiders and Summer Holiday, I tried to slow down a little. With the para para, the craze is only just beginning to catch on in Hong Kong, so I think my timing is just right."

Ma says he looks for inspiration from former Hong Kong-based Hollywood director John Woo. "John can make even the simple act of walking look romantic. When I started out as a director, I had to find a niche for myself. I couldn't be as artistic as Stanley Kwan Kam-pang or Ann Hui On-wah and I couldn't be as popular as Wong Jing because I didn't have as many ideas. But there aren't many directors doing romantic dramas.

"I'm not out to copy him [Woo], but I think it's good to have him as a target so that I can push myself to run parallel to him. He's one of the most successful directors who has merged art with commercialism. If I can only achieve a little of what he has done, I would be happy." A former director of advertising commercials, Ma got his start in the industry after literally begging Sylvia Chang Ai-chia for a job on Passion (1986). It was the break he'd been looking for. "At the advertising agency, Chinese directors only ever got to do the small, local commercials. The big jobs went to expatriates. So I decided to try my luck in films," says Ma, who is now Chang's business partner in the production company, Red On Red.

With more than 40 movies under his belt - including Peter Chan's Comrades, Almost A Love Story, Rumble In The Bronx and The God Of Cookery - Ma made the jump to directing after serving as director of photography on Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting's City Of Glass in 1998. Later that year the 44-year-old made his directorial debut with Hot War. However, it wasn't until the wildly successful tear-jerker Fly Me To Polaris (1999) that Ma was introduced to a wider public. He followed that up with the stylish Tokyo Raiders and the light-hearted romance Summer Holiday, both of which cemented his standing as a box-office commodity. The only blot on his copybook is the recent Goodbye Mr Cool, which follows a triad leader's efforts to escape his past. "It [Mr Cool] was a project I really wanted to do because that was the social strata that I come from. There are triad movies that glorified the gangs, but I wanted to tell the story of people who want to turn over a new leaf and are still victimised by the triads. The movie didn't do well, of course, because it didn't get the support of the triad audience," Ma says with a shrug.

The director admits the remainder of his work has been unabashedly commercial, although he likes to distinguish between "quality commercial productions" and lesser ones. "When I first started out as a director, Golden Harvest asked me what kind of director I wanted to be. I said `a director of popular culture films'. Besides the artistic side of films, there is a commercial factor involved because it requires people to spend money and buy tickets, and it requires investment from your bosses. You cannot be too indulgent because it will make your bosses lose money and they won't invest again," he says.

"Hong Kong people go to the cinema to relieve stress. Even a tear-jerker such as Fly Me To Polaris can do that. I can go in and cry my eyes out and release pent-up frustrations. That is my main focus, I want to make my audience happy."