Showing @ Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Tue 23 Oct only

The marriage of sound and vision is what the Richard Alston Dance Company is famous for. Whilst other choreographers often battle against the accompaniment, Alston is interested in how the dance and music engage with each other. The pieces chosen here to show off these ideas are a mix between the safe, the imaginative and the bold – and the results are an equally mixed bag, but as always with Alston, worth turning up for.

The Devil in the Detail takes the syncopation of Scott Joplin’s ragtime music and marries it to a sunny Sunday promenade in a fictional small-town America. The match is perfect (barring a few timing errors) and the up-tempo tunes suit the struts and turns as beaus attempt to impress the girls. Coy flirtation threatens, but never actually, gets out of hand. The dancers create a gorgeous mise-en-scène without any sets and you can practically smell the magnolia blossoms.

The centre piece of the evening is Shimmer, set to the modernist melodies of Maurice Ravel. The costumes by Julien Macdonald are reminiscent of those in Black Swan, but this is more of an ugly duckling. By the end, it transfixes you with the skill and elegance of the movement (particularly from soloist Nathan Goodman), but it begins with a section where instead of dancers floating with gossamer lightness they are hoisted like rolls of Axminster.

It’s rare in a company like Alston’s to have anyone you could call a star, but Goodman is clearly a talent to watch in the world of dance. In the final piece, the frenetic and visceral Madcap, set to two Julia Wolfe pieces performed by Bang on a Can, Goodman takes centre stage and again proves a magnetic presence. In what is a hit-and-miss evening, Madcap is the highlight; energetic, angry and with so much creative attack that neither the dancers nor the audience had time to stop for breath. This isn’t an evening of vintage Alston by any means, but as ever with this company, there is enough inventiveness and feeling for the music to lift both dance and music to a lofty standard.