How much of a compromise does a fashionable choreographer loved by all have to make with his paymasters? When he’s unfashionable, it’s only the Arts Council he has to please. When the world wants a piece of him, he has London’s Sadler’s Wells and the Roundhouse, Grenoble, Paris, Luxembourg, Montreal, Hong Kong, Taipei, Wolfsburg, Brighton, Amiens, Bruges, Amsterdam, Rheims and Leicester producers all tugging at his sleeve, offering support for the quasi-divine creation but wanting to get their spanner into the works somewhere.
In which light I take my hat off to Khan. A fortnight after seeing his Until The Lions at the Roundhouse, ground down at the time by pain and dulled by medicine, and fussing over every fault, I find myself now remembering and chewing over some of those sights and impressions. Sponsoritis can no doubt be blamed for the self-conscious artificiality of happy-clappy fusion musicians around the stage.
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