Jasmin Vardimon Dance Co, Gardner Arts Centre, Brighton

As a preparatory exercise, Vardimon asked each of her eight dancers to follow an interesting stranger for a day, and worked up a cast of characters from their findings. There's the bag lady who wears her entire wardrobe for warmth. There's an apologetic busker, stricken to receive money from people poorer than he is. There's a pair of Asbo-worthy bullies, all pretend-head-butts and no bite; a tourist, a rough-sleeper, a demure office worker and a flirt. The only figure likely to keep folk awake at night is Leon Baugh's seething BNP bullet-head, whose absurd vocal rants ("I believe in united divisions in Europe!") are as nothing to the pent-up violence of his movements. Hunched under his Adidas hoodie, he rubber-balls off vertical surfaces, rebounds from whole-body falls, hurls himself at foes. He is indestructible, brain dead and deadly, and as a virtuoso turn, he is stunning.

On a set ringed by security fencing and concrete flowerbeds, Vardimon starts out merely to establish the physical detail of these types. But clearly what really interests her are the primitive social dynamics that lie beneath their wary encounters, and soon the characters are losing their inhibitions in a series of repetitive dance routines (thankyou, Pina Bausch) and bizarre metamorphoses. A man berated by his girlfriend suddenly becomes a dog; another runs away from a fight and shins up a lamp post as a monkey, yet another turns into a pigeon, bothering a sandwich-eater for crumbs.

Yet though Vardimon handles her tools with skill, juggling an eclectic pop score, movement and spoken text, the feeling that one event never convincingly connects to the next makes whole thing seem arbitrary. It's as if she set out with the idea of making some big social statement, but then didn't find anything to say. The worst of it is that the piece is twice too long. Yet it contains some highly original material, beautifully executed by a talented cast, and if Vardimon had taken a firmer hand with the editing these would have had more prominence. Who would imagine a frumpy office worker could hold a stage with a ritualised solo based on laying down her handbag, walking, waving and giggling? Yet in Kath Duggan's cameo turn we glimpse a whole emotional life. An ice-skating duet, with plastic bags tied round the feet, is as clever as anything by Matthew Bourne, and a group dance that mimics a dribbled basketball is the surprise fillip of the evening.

jenny.gilbert@independent.co.uk

Tour continues: Riverfront, Newport (01633 656757) Thurs; Peacock Theatre, London WC2 (0870 737 7737) 24 & 25 Nov