The one thing that used to be certain in the sweet, satirical world of The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs was that girls were girls and boys were boys. For the groups' 20th anniversary show, however, choreographer Lea Anderson has trashed tradition and switched roles. The all-male Fans (short for Fanshaws, as it is pronounced) dance Flesh and Blood, Anderson's play on the iconography of female saints and martyrs, while the all-female Chums (short for Chumleys) perform eight short pieces from the boys' rep. Most of the dancers in Double Take are new, but it is proof of Anderson's singularity of vision that none of the works have dated, and that they accommodate the gender swap so effectively.
Flesh and Blood, from 1989, is a particularly expert mix of contradictions. Gestures of fervent piety and penance become riffs of edgy, mechanistic dance, and religious ardour is mixed with images from hell: figures sprawled, clawing. The Fans, dressed in Sandy Powell's seriously weird silver dresses, are utterly credible, their male heft giving an added propulsion to the choreography while paradoxically enforcing its images of vulnerability.
Good as the performances are, however, they can't overcome the work's longueurs. Anderson's favoured strategies - insistent repetition, serial structure - don't work well over the long stretch. And while Steve Blake's music creates a nice fusion of sinister and whimsical, the whole piece sags well before the 45 minutes are over.
But the show's second half gives us Anderson at her anarchic and beady-eyed best. The Chums, dressed in the sharpest of suits, get to play at being barflies, lounge lizards and wannabe rock stars; throughout, Anderson's instinct for gesture is all but infallible. Greetings, a duet composed purely of handshakes and warily affectionate body language, is a gem. Even though the women don't deliver the linking patter with sufficient panache, their dancing is superbly slick and just the right side of silly. What an impressive back catalogue Anderson has; how good it would be to see her working on her old form again.
· At the Glastonbury festival, June 25-27, and Northcott Theatre, Exeter (01392 493493) on July 3. Then touring.
