A Marcel Avram production. Directed by Rufus Beck. At the River Rock Show Theatre until Sunday, June 11

It's not art; it's a litmus test. Night of the Sultans, the flashy dance extravaganza now on at Richmond's River Rock Show Theatre, looks purpose-built to expose where one stands on that age-old aesthetic debate: form versus content. If you like form, you'll love it. If you prefer content, however, you're better off staying home with a good book.

From a choreographic standpoint, this Israeli-produced, Istanbul- assembled entertainment is little more than Riverdance with upper-body movement. Nonetheless, it does have the benefit of Dolun Doyran's legs, which put the odious Michael Flatley's to shame. I'm not in the habit of ogling male gams, but Doyran's are so freakishly long and slim that they deserve special mention; his sprung-steel limbs might in fact be the single best thing about Night of the Sultans. Doyran plays Prometheus, and this is his story, so he spends a lot of time gyrating at centre stage while hordes of villagers or warriors or courtesans zig and zag in geometric patterns behind him. And so fascinating are his spidery appendages that even the half-clad Circassian slave girls don't detract from their spell.

Nor does the plot. In this telling of the Promethean legend, our leggy hero steals fire from the gods to warm the humans he loves, but instead of being chained to a mountainside where eagles can worry his attenuated bones, he gets to marry Pandora, she of the evil box, and love makes everything okay.

The evil box rolls on- and off-stage a few times, and the devil makes a few appearances, usually dancing a staggeringly unsexy pas de deux with a small woman in a pink leotard who represents either lust or, more likely, a 12-year-old Romanian gymnast. There's swordplay and belly dancing and much leaping about, but somewhere along the way the story appears to have evaporated.

I'm told that between the small size of the River Rock stage and B.C.'s stringent fire regulations, many of the usual props and all of the pyrotechnics have been trimmed from this mounting. Nonetheless, the show makes a valiant effort to impress, with its propulsive and overamplified score, its gaudy lighting cues, and all that hyperactive choreography. Without more theatrical integrity, however, Night of the Sultans seems a waste of many beautiful bodies and two enviable legs.