This hour-long evocation of the spirit of Dante’s Divine Comedy was first performed in Cambridge two years ago, but its arrival in Oxford is appropriate for several reasons. First, the reader was Prof Robin Kirkpatrick, a Dante scholar, quoting from his own Penguin translation of the work, and initiator of the idea for the show. He is a graduate of Merton College. Susie Crow, who made the dances and supervised the event, is a former Royal Ballet soloist now choreographing and teaching in Oxford. And finally, by a happy coincidence, a stained-glass portrait of the poet looks down from one of the chapel’s windows.

Dante’s poem moves from hell, through purgatory, to paradise. To set the scene, the string members of the Cappe Sextet gave us one of Beethoven’s most agitated quartet movements, followed by one from Ligeti’s Quartet no 2 — discordant, angst-ridden, full of foreboding.

Prof Kirkpatrick read of “sighing and wailing echoing though air where no stars shone”, while the rich textures of Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s My Day in Hell embody in musical form some of the souls Dante meets on his journey. In purgatory we find those who have sinned through pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lust. Each is given an appropriate penance, and here, to music by Jeremy Thurlow, Crow’s female dancers enter in single file, led by flautist Hannah Grayson and oboist David Currington. The dancers are reaching, searching — supplicants in virginal shifts.

Crow has not attempted the near-impossible task of illustrating their penances, but in a sequence of crouching, sometimes prostrate movement, she conveys the hope of rising to redemption.

This achieved, there is a liberating, well-danced solo from Laura Addison, in a cape of floating green silk which she manipulates (see above) as part of her dance. There is more dancing, more music, more Dante, until this short but satisfying performance comes to an end.

Pictures: Mark Brome