The nation's saving grace

This has been a season for revisiting early work. White Oak did it in Edinburgh, Richard Alston did it at The Place, and William Forsythe is about to do it here at Sadler's Wells. Watching The Fall, replete as it is with all the Clark motifs - goldfish-swallowing, fetishised footwear, bare bums - one is struck not by the anarchy of the piece, but by its seriousness. First time around, Clark's transgressive and outlandish effects seemed to blur and overwhelm the dance content. Watching through older eyes, however, a curious formality and innocence emerges. Clark is not so much taking his revenge on traditional ballet as celebrating its form, discipline and limits. The dancer on stage may be wearing a baby-doll nightie and a strap-on dildo, but she is bang on the beat and performing a perfect entrechat quatre. Second time around, it's the outrageous purity of the step that hits you between the eyes.

The seam that Clark mines, bounded as it is by the lyrical on one side and the grotesque on the other, is a peculiarly British one. In the second piece, Rise, he appears jacketed but trouserless, with shapeless dun-coloured underpants swinging around his thighs. A film shows him masturbating against a bare wall, and a flickering time code tells us precisely how long it takes him to reach a shoulder-hunching climax. The female dancers enter in huge Y-fronts, and begin a restlessly beautiful series of classical leaps and turns. A vast and elaborate arm is wheeled onto the stage by technicians, and - to the strains of Zorba's dance - set into rocking, pumping motion. A truly heroic silliness is achieved, and you feel proud to be British.

The Michael Clark Company