Michael Clark has always been able to marry serious contemporary dance sensibilities to fashionable hard-core rock music, a talent that gives him instant credibility outside the dance world as well as within it. You certainly felt the Clark buzz circulating through the foyer of the Edinburgh Playhouse on the opening night of his new Festival commission. And no wonder. For his latest creation, come, been and gone Clark has chosen music by a trinity of 1970s rock gods: Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and David Bowie.

To some classic tracks (and some less well known) Clark sets out to sum up a choreographic career that spans 25 years, a remarkable feat given that he’s still only 47. From the moment you hear Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat, the familiar signatures are there. That characteristic slow walk forward while leaning back; the tilted balances; the devotion to precise positions of the body. If at times you think you’ve seen parts of the dance before you probably have, for Clark is not ashamed to recycle himself. And when Kate Coyne comes out for her solo, dressed in a full-body costume festooned with syringes and with the Velvet Underground’s Heroin on the soundtrack, you realise that Clark is referencing his own personal past as well.

The film projection of Bowie singing Heroes is a visual high point, though the low-key choreography struggles to compete with the gigantic and compelling image on screen. Clark’s puckish sense of humour is evoked in a trio of naked bums having a wee dance (with the dancers’ backs to the audience) and the cheeky pointe shoe entry to Bowie’s 1972 classic The Jean Genie. Clark’s choreography responds well to a strong beat and the anarchic energy of rock, yet his language remains almost luminous in its purity and refinement. Still, because come, been and gone is so sprawling it feels less structured and focused than its companion piece, Swamp, despite striking performances by its six dancers.

Made in 1986 for Rambert, Swamp remains Clark’s masterpiece. That none of his work has ever surpassed its gleaming coherence and mesmerising shape is not a criticism, just a confirmation that Clark’s talent exploded almost fully formed at an incredibly young age. Newly recostumed in dark blue, Swamp (set to music by Wire and Bruce Gilbert) looks good. The forceful advance of the dance,the beautiful lines, wonky accents and punchy rhythms are still breathtaking, even though this performance felt under-rehearsed. And can anyone else create a duet of such cool detachment and shimmering sensuality?

I don’t think so.

Box office: 0131-473 2000, ends tonight. Michael Clark Company is at the Barbican, London EC2 (Oct 28-Nov 7)