A new show claims your gestures tell as much about you as your taste in music does, writes Michael Seaver.

Many artists struggle to describe their work, but when Wendy Houstoun mentions Desert Island Discsas the inspiration for her latest piece, you know exactly what she is talking about. Even if you've never listened to the BBC4 radio show, you probably know the device: a guest chooses eight pieces of music, a book and a luxury item that they would take with them if cast away on a desert island.

"But what physical movements would you take with you?" asks Houstoun. "I'm interested in what the body logs as memory and what physical traits describe you as a person." So just as Desert Island Discscreator Roy Plomley discovered that a person's musical taste could reveal their character, Houstoun maintains that in Desert Island Dances, individual movements are similarly disclosing.

A veteran of the physical avant-garde, in groups such as DV8 and Forced Entertainment, Houstoun seems antithetical to the middle-class smugness of Desert Island Discs. Its listeners can be pedants, like the gent who informed the programme that the seagull calls overdubbed on Eric Coates' signature music were those of herring gulls and would not be found near an equatorial desert island - or nostalgic, like those whose complaints reinstated the seagull calls after they were removed. In 1994 the British Commission for Racial Equality complained that the hundreds of guests included just six blacks and three Asians. Yet Desert Island Discshas weathered critical tornados, and the formula has remained unchanged since its first broadcast in 1942.

Success lies in the way that a Desert Island Discsconversation can divulge more about person than a session in Professor Anthony Clare's chair. Houstoun's solo pieces and films can be more revelatory than the polemic of DV8 or Forced Entertainment. Happy Hour, which she performed in The George and Project's bar in 2000, was a perfectly pitched solo that charted a barmaid's slow descent into alcoholic rage and loneliness. Never preaching, she just took drunken swipes at British society and "New Labour's virtual reality" that each landed perfectly. Expect something similar in Desert Island Dances.

"An important part of this piece is conjuring up the island. This is a mix of the idyllic fantasy and the reality that surrounds me as I live on this island called Britain," she says. Established names such as Lloyd Newson, John Avery, Rachel Krische and John Rowley contributed to the final shape of the piece, but so too did raw audience feedback. "I did an early version where the audience says exactly what they think, which is really helpful. Someone said they wanted more movement and more jokes, and I quite liked that. It was easy enough to oblige!"

She addresses the audience directly during the performance, which is why she prefers the informality of site-specific settings rather than conventional black-box theatres.

"My heart sinks a bit every time I go into one," she confesses, knowing that she will have to negotiate the space to break the barrier between her and the viewer. Later in the week she'll be back on the same stage in Forced Entertainment's The World in Pictures(both are supported by the British Council). Unlike the fluid blend of forms in that work, spoken text and movement are kept separate in Desert Island Dances. Instead of music it's the movement that triggers memories, like where you first used the movement or the person who taught it to you. But she isn't setting out to mimic the radio show. "No, it's a rough allusion. I don't have any luxury item . . . maybe I could . . ." she begins to ponder, always open to change.

• Desert Island Dances is at the Project Arts Centre on Wed.The World in Pictures is on Fri and Sat.