Real choreographic collaborations – true joint authorship of a work- don’t come along that often. When a dance maker has already forged their own distinctive and successful style and language, it is comparatively rare to want to mix that with another’s. Surely one style or the other will predominate, or the joins will show ? Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (of Les Ballets C de la B) have been planning this collaboration for some time, and have added further twists to the mix by way of adding further collaborators Nitin Sawhney for the music (who has worked with Khan before) and the sculptor Antony Gormley, a new departure for both of them. Zero Degrees is the result: maybe the mix doesn’t quite gel in places and there are the occasional flat patches, but at its best there is some fabulous and intricately virtuosic dancing which is stunning to behold.

Zero Degrees is a 70 minute work without interval, performed by Khan and Cherkaoui on a bare stage, with four musicians concealed behind them. Gormley provides two life size dummies, one based on each dancer, as the only props. The theme propounded by the programme is the transition, the journey towards death – the zero degrees of the title. By way of introduction, we begin with a narration from both performers of details of a passage Khan has made from Bangladesh into India, a journey which is picked up again at a later point in the performance, where the death of a man on a train to Calcutta and its effect on Khan is described. This is similar to the scraps of narration that Khan has woven into previous works, but the difference here is that it is, disconcertingly, given in complete synchronisation by both performers at once – complete synchronisation of every single word and hand gesture. There’s something both funny and slightly eerie about this.

At its best the production has some very striking passages. In one, the performers facing each other intricately enlacing their arms in endlessly complex fluid interlockings, like sea anemones. Another sees them covering the stage in a danced contest of thrusts and kicks, a perfectly timed series of ritualised and polished moves which is both combat and co-operation. There are also passages where both are separately performing the same steps which gives time to ponder the differences between them as performers. Khan is smaller, more compact, more intense: even when he and Cherkaoui are moving at the same speed there is something that persuades you that Khan is somehow faster. Cherkaoui is taller, paler, twitchily long limbed and flexible.

Each gets a chance to demonstrate what they do best: there is a peculiar solo for Cherkaoui where his head appears to be stuck to the floor but his body takes off in all directions from it as he attempts to wriggle himself free. Khan spins across the stage at hair raising speed. It is also a definite experiment in exchanging styles. Cherkaoui takes off his shoes and slaps the floor with his feet and chants Khan’s kathak rhythms. Khan moves towards Cherkaoui’s style of mime and narrative in a disconcerting passage where Khan’s body responds as his dummy is kicked and slapped. There is something sinister about these two dummies, treated as proxy for the performer they represent.. I was ready for them to start moving independently at some point. It’s worrying enough that one of them can stand on its own.

Not all sections sustain the same standard, and there is sometimes a sense of repetition. But the collaboration seems to have been a liberating force for Khan at least. In his own company he has the difficulty (if one can call it that) of being such a spellbinding soloist that he cannot help but dominate the stage In his last work, Ma, he seemed to push himself further into the background, as if he didn’t want to call attention to himself to the detriment of the work as a whole. In this collaboration, both performers dance full out without either dominating.

At the end Cherkaoui tenderly gathers up the collapsed Khan and carries him away leaving the stage to Sawhney’s haunting music. It’s a surprise to realise no one has left the stage till that point. A fascinating and many layered event.

I saw this performance on its first preview night, last Friday - and I agree with Lynette and think that it is a fabulous show.

The dummies are menacing at times, floppy at others, friends at others.... The look of them reminded me of pictures of Pompeii.

I do think that Khan still dominated - but I thought this in Ma as well (but not in a bad way) - the way he moves, his unique blend of training, is something that can be attempted, imitated, but not copied. No one moves like him. That said, Larbi did an impressive job, especially with the vocalisations and Kathak steps. Did anyone else notice that Larbi couldn't give his feet to the floor? He couldn't stamp with the same resounding 'tak tak' sound. I found this interesting as he gave weight so easily to the floor with the rest of his body in his solo.

I also wonder - and would be curious to hear from both non-Hindi speakers and from those who are/aren't first/second generation immigrants - how much gets lost in translation? The story telling that Khan integrates into his work strikes a chord with me. I was almost in tears when he was talking about how he just wanted to go to a hotel - to have his conveniences. Also, the Hindi in some of the songs (esp the one that accompanied a beautiful solo) was poignant, IMO. After telling the tale of the train ride to Calcutta, we hear (in Hindi) (and apologies for my rough translation!) "Look, look, no one goes near him". On the whole, I thus strongly disagree with Crisp's comment in today's FT that the introspective anxiety was tiresome - rather, it's what the confusion in Khan's work is all about.

Dennis - the music. It is arranged by Nitin Sawhney (who I love as well! yay!) However, I was also a bit confused by the last piece, sung by Larbi - I did not know if it was a Morroccan song that Sawhney incorporated? I didn't catch any Hindi in it, but I also wasn't really paying attention - was totally absorbed by Khan's transformation into a replica of his replica!

The design was also interesting - the only other work by Khan that I'm familiar with is Ma, and I think he had the same lighting person? He seems to like to mark out space - make his rectangles out of darkness and light. In Ma he also would then darken the rectangle and make new spaces within with light. But there's something about denoting space on stage. Khan is a fluid dancer, even though he's percussive and has accents, there is a smoothness and a roundness to his dancing - interesting then that the roundness is placed in angularity.

I could go on and on - needless to say that I really liked this, and am also interested by the myriad of reviews it has received. I would say tha the trip to watch it and make up your mind for yourself is completely worth it.

Gormley did an instalation ionce n the courtyard of the Royal Acdemy once, which featured lots of casts (of his body this time) in various poses and places - lying on the ground, on windowledges, in all kinds of places. That reminded me of Pompeii too.....

Sadler’s Wells

zero degrees

12th July 2005

Three continents collide in the mix of cultural influences at play within this new collaborative venture by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Akram Khan and Sadler’s Wells. This is an episodic work of many interweaved chapters throughout which runs a thematic attraction of opposites: Britain and continental Europe; pale and dark; steel and rubber; tragedy and comedy; float and bounce; India and North Africa; feet and hands; life and death. These contrasts are perfectly captured in the main publicity photograph for ‘zero degrees’ where Khan’s dignified face is reverentially tilted downwards, eyes closed as if in prayer, whilst eloquently morphing into Cherkaoui’s manic, full-frontal, wide-eyed stare.

Entwined within the dance text are three spoken episodes that tell the story of a train journey across the Indian/Bangladeshi border, beginning with the emotional alarm generated by a potentially lost passport and culminating with the unnoticed demise of a fellow passenger and the eventual discovery that his unresponsive body is a corpse. The core of this work is to be found in the fundamental issues at the root of these two situations: the passport as a metaphor for existence, the loss of which provides the transitional point between being someone or no-one; and the unseen moment that separates life from death. Khan has said that ‘zero degrees’ is about that transitional point.

The opening chapter demonstrates the potential of a new Olympic sport - synchronised, rhythmic speaking. Sitting cross-legged at the front of the stage, Khan and Cherkaoui narrate the passport tale with an amazing unity of voices and hands: even every stutter, guttural imperfection and repeated word is delivered with mesmerising accuracy accompanied with perfectly harmonised hand gestures. This episode leads into a hand and arm duet which blends the ethnic origins of both dancers’ respective craft. Then there is an intensely fluid solo by Cherkaoui in which he covers the whole stage, travelling, rolling, balancing and somersaulting on his head, back, shoulders and arms: in fact on almost everything other than his feet. Cherkaoui’s rubber-boned flexibility contrasts with a later solo from Khan, in which his erect body floats across the stage on feet which appear to move on castors.

All the time, two white figures lie diagonally opposite one another on the stage. These flexible mannequins are part of the contribution from sculptor, Antony Gormley. My companion was disappointed and thought they looked like grimy crash-test dummies. However, for me, the figures – particularly when standing upright - often seemed to be additional performers, both in terms of the silent interaction with their human companions and also as the visual image of the narrative’s dead Bangladeshi on the train. Towards the end of Cherkaoui’s solo, he repeatedly slaps himself with a statue’s hand and, in one of the later chapters, he kicks and stamps on the prostrate dummy whilst Khan’s adjacent body reacts violently to the abuse. It is an uncomfortable image made more so by the apparently, soft tissue humanoid form that Gormley has created. Much more ‘i-robot’ than crash-test dummy: an image that is reinforced by the final tableau of the four figures joined together, hand-in-hand, standing, sitting and lying in a pathetic, yet unbreakable, chain.

In an uninterrupted piece of some 70 minutes’ duration, it is perhaps unsurprising that there are times when it tiptoes towards self-indulgence, such as in Cherkaoui’s strange (and, I’m sure, unintended) parody of John Cleese in a Pythonesque “Ministry of Funny Walks” and, again, with his overlong, closing song (although the strength and purity of his voice after an hour’s dancing was incredible).

None of this can detract from a remarkable event that has been carved out of a unique encounter of two great dance artists and the mutual integration of the many traditions and ideas that have separately influenced their work. They have created many memorable moments in this collaboration, which has been made possible by Sadler’s Wells' exciting policy to commission and produce new work.

The achievement of diversity in this rich cultural mix and the emphasis on creation, newness and optimism that currently flows out of Sadler’s Wells gives those of us who have been privileged to be here in these past few days one more reason to be proud of London.

Graham Watts