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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.