Forty years ago Richard Alston made his first choreography - marked, I recall, by a clarity that still informs his work. He was an early student of the London Contemporary Dance School, and he (and Siobhan Davies) were the first products of that school to break away and follow a path different from that proposed by the Graham-based manner of the Place, where Robin Howard and Robert Cohan were making things happen.

Forty years on, and in his 60th year, last week's season by his company at Sadler's Wells was the chance for a brief retrospective (by way of the choreography he has given male dancers) and a way to offer us new work as a birthday present in reverse. All we can do in return is to express gratitude and hopes for yet more dances.

This year's Shuffle it Right is a charmer. Recordings of Hoagy Carmichael performing his own songs. Ensembles, solos, duets springing ebullient from the music, involve five men (snazzy in white shirts, and palest gray trews) and five women (in frocks suggestive of mail-order chic), the men cutting buoyant capers and with pretty work for the women, while Carmichael inspires Alston to dance as nonchalant and witty as music and lyrics.

There followed a pièce d'occasion: The Men in my Life is a look at choreography Alston has made for his male dancers over the years, and he has ever written well for men. So, lightning sketches and tributes through sweeps of movement that show the possibilities of male technique as Alston has shaped it.

Memories flood back - young Michael Clark in Dutiful Ducks, brilliantly revived by Jonathan Goddard - and much choreography that deserves to be restored to the stage. The fascinating Petrushka solo (the cell-scene) was admirably done by Pierre Tappon; Martin Lawrance returned to his subtle variation from Shimmer, and Goddard revived his contemplative dance from Fingerprint.

And so it powerfully went. With the final and brand new Blow Over I have difficulties. The accompaniment is pop songs by Philip Glass, which I find rather less to my taste in manner and hand-knitted text and baying performance than root-canal dentistry. Difficult to judge dance under these circumstances: what I saw was fluent, close-knit movement, but the sound-track kept interfering.