Would, Should, Can, Did, Barbican Hall London, ****

"That's what's been announced," said the publicist Miles anxiously as he handed out the programme. "But what will actually happen is anybody's guess." True to form, Michael Clark was keeping not just his dancers on their toes and, true to form, his name packed the house. But form is what Clark has found again. In keeping with his show's title Would, Should, Can, Did, he did superbly. Miles needn't have worried.

The Barbican's genre-mixing Only Connect season was an ideal showcase for this one-off event, since Clark has always sought to link up with artists from other fields. They tend to become honorary members of the Clark family, which meant that the Barbican stage felt like a party for avant-garde friends, including previous collaborators such as the visual artists Sarah Lucas and Cerith Wyn Evans, the radical rockster Susan Stenger, and the designer Hussein Chalayan (providing simple yet stylish outfits).

Also there was Clark's mum, making her debut in an extract from his 2001 show Before and After: The Fall alongside two children and various dancers, so that where before Wyn Evans's moving neon strips had been nothing more than a poetic light sculpture, this time they became a statement about the span of human generations.

Similarly, we had already seen William Trevitt a few weeks before perform the opening solo of Satie Studs, a tongue-in-cheek title for a series of studies to the music of Satie. The antique, pellucid poses had been part of a programme presented by George Piper Dances: here they were followed by dances for a quartet – quintessential Clark choreography in their lilting, balletic patterns, sometimes cutting across Satie's tempos, sometimes suddenly gelling dramatically.

Alternating with the quartet are solo entries by Clark, set apart by his black street-suit and eccentric movement, with his paddling hands and turned-in limbs. He was the joker in the pack, making his first incursion to the accompaniment of a taped audience, applauding, ooh-ing and aah-ing. This was the appealingly jokey Clark, but it was also Clark the outstanding dancer, the best mover on stage, with long tapering outlines that slash across space.

Would, Should, Can, Did was vintage Clark, a show that could not have been constructed by anyone else. Typical was the way one disparate section segued into another, so that, for example, the abstract screen projections at the end of the first half led to the film animation of the second. Typical also was the invention of the evening's beginning, a formalised, extended warm-up in which the dancers made simple pacing patterns to a repeated note. And yes, typical also was the rudery, with Clark attached to Sarah Lucas's portable lavatory seat, complete with mock, bendy legs.

If it shocks, maybe it's worth doing, even if Clark is approaching 41. But when he's done with trying to shock, when he can no longer dance, he can carry on choreographing, for which he has a rare gift.