Last year this French company’s performance was one of the hits of Dancin’ Oxford, with a single dancer suspended against the wall of the former prison. Encouraged by this success they came back this year with five dancers, to present their new show Danse des Cariatides, in which the female sculptures that support the roofs of buildings come to life. To quote their programme note: “These beings of stone leave their pedestal and enter into the space they have gazed at for so long. Their mineral consistency softens, and they slowly extricate themselves from the architecture. Under the foundations live huge caryatids who support the architecture. They emerge from the subsoil, keep close to facades, play with volumes, and finally meet for nocturnal dances.”

Twin cables descend from the roof; two more, a metre or so apart, cross the courtyard and are fixed to the roof of the flats opposite. First we see a single dancer against the prison wall; then she is joined by an enormous shadow-dancer projected from below, her movement created by another dancer on the ground. Now there are two live dancers on the wall; they swing and gyrate and become knotted together in an embrace of legs like a giant white spider, swinging to and fro across the surface; a living pendulum. Suddenly they are joined by four or five others, but these are projections, filmed earlier against the same wall. These figures grow huge now, springing out and up from the wall that is their stage. An image of a man in green trousers briefly joins the white-clad dancers; it’s Fabrice Guillot, the professional rock-climber who adapted his techniques to form this company.

Eventually there are five caryatids flying, turning, dancing in the air, until two of them venture out into the air above us in a final dance, before they all return again to stone. Within the limitations of what’s possible hanging from a harness, this company has created a beautiful work