Had the audience not been as young and inexperienced, I believe this revival performance of leading modern choreographer Christopher Bruce's classic, Swansong, would have drawn a standing ovation. Such was the level of skill and intensity of expression and interaction. And, therefore, endurance.

It was the now customary youthful and uninhibited audience, in high proportion, that Rambert draw at Brighton, not least through their preparatory work in local schools and colleges, and they were cheering and whooping from the first curtain down in a four-work programme. It is always wonderful to see contemporary dancers greeted like this and it must be exhilarating for them to perform to.

But I doubt if the youngsters fully perceived just how much work the three dancers in Swansong got through in this 35-minutes of searingly direct communication and varied forms of dance first created in 1987. It deals with torture and interrogation by two on one, and is set to a threatening score by Philip Chambon that is melodic as well as percussive and ambient, and has scarcely dated.

The uniformed Eryck Brahmania and Hubert Essakow put Thomasin Gulgec through the mill with his simple upright chair the only scene setter bar the lighting. There is menacing tap in jazz shoes, there is parody of and Broadway dance, there is implied violence among the taunting, there is agony and defiance from the victim.

Brahmania, a with-honours Royal Ballet graduate, is an exotic addition to the Rambert cast and Essakov a brought stature and presence to Gulgec's nightmare, which puts him through three desperate solos while the guard adjourn to, presumably, their offstage beer, fags and porno mags.

Dedicated originally to Amnesty International, this work's revival finds no obstacle to its continuing relevance and power. It will be seen now as an iconic artistic world contribution from contemporary dance.

You would be wrong in thinking that Swansong was the highlight of this new touring programme. Yes, it was the real meat, but all four items hit a spot.

A second creation for Rambert by Nairobi-born Melanie Teall came in L'eveil (to awaken) and, again from her, the theme was the feminine. It succeeded absorbingly in presenting six women, each with a different variety of feminine aspects to express, but unified in their purpose and intent, as well as their identical, revealing black leotards inspired by fashion designer Roland Mouret.

Beginning to a softly tolling bell with a quiet background sound pulse, the dancers were released from a frozen state. The mood moved to a Kurt Weil song, Je Ne T'aime Pas, delivered on the side of the stage by the distinguished Melanie Marshall and thence to a jazzy blues, Feeling Good by Leslie Bricusse. Music was live, from the pit and London Musici.

A truly stimulating start to the evening and it was taken a joyful step further by Mozart. His both ravishing and rattlingly racy wind serenade, the Gran Partita, gave that name to American choreographer Karole Armitage's contribution, which was premiered last year.

She has danced for Balanchine, created a work for Rudolf Nureyev's Paris Opera Ballet, and is artistic director of Armitage Gone! Dance in New York. Mozart's first three movements and his finale were a sheer thrill to hear from London Musici (complete with bassett horns), let alone to find, on stage, a meeting of the notes with bodies and movement entirely natural, almost innocent.

Male and female dancers, now, in various light-coloured shades of simple attire, with two girls and one boy, Brahmania again, adding smiles which, isolated among the other faces, focused delicately the pleasure in the sounds heard.

Mozart, to me, seldom seems ideal ballet music - I can't, yet, put my finger on why - but here the contemporary take, and Armitage's feel, removed any apprehensions.

The sense of release of the opening movement was palpable. The formality in the minuet and its trios was embraced casually and its insistent sectionalisations smoothed away.

Number 3 is the Romanza, made famous in the film Amadeus, when Salieri tells his listener that here dwells sublime, unprecedented genuis. An unashamed pas de deux, sweet and easy, is what Armitage gives us (Brahmania is the lucky guy, and he gets Angela Towner), and why the heck not?

The bubbling finale came and went all too soon.

Swansong came next and if that seemed an act unfollowable, Infinity showed otherwise. After Swansong's sense of realism, to surrealism, and its element of controversy, came ultimate, inescapable profundity.

Australian Garry Stewart's choreography draws on gymnastics and yoga but this time borrowed from Japanese Butoh to feed the notion of physical deterioration, because Infinity is about death and the hope for something permanent beyond.

Stewart's work makes instrumental the music, costumes and scenery. Luke Smiles' driving score of world music has a strong electronic element which brings a bass presence like a heartbeat disrupted and, as well as emphasising the idea of deterioration, this is part of what one realises, with death unremittingly approaching, is a prolonged and unavoidable crescendo.

Georg Meyter-Weil dresses the 13 (are we all unlucky?) dancers in uniformly white, sleeveless, skirted tunics, latticed to suggest ribcage, split at the front to peel away sometimes as though skin shedding.

And Gaele Mellis brings intermittent, parallel cascades of red petals, accompanied at the start and finish by the sound of running water. These fall from on high and slowly envelop the stage. The effect is of pouring, then massively pooling blood.

Not one of these four works was I not left hankering to see again.

And it can be done: Rambert's Tour visits Newcastle's Theatre Royal (April 1-5; 08448 112121), Clywyd Theatre Cymru in Mold, Wales (April 11; 0845 330 3565), and Sadler's Wells in London (May 20-24; 0844 412 4300).

Rambert present this programme (7.45pm) through to Saturday with a matinee at 2pm on Thursday and a family matinee on Saturday at 2.30pm comprising a talk and demonstration giving insight into Rambert and featuring performances of Swansong and Infinity.

More contemporary dance coming to Brighton: The Richard Alston Dance Company to the Dome at the beinning of April. See this website for news of this, and RADC member Jonathan Goddard's national recognition.