This was one of the most unusual and stimulating shows of the fifth Dancin’ Oxford festival. The French company Retouramont was founded by Fabrice Guillot, a professional rock climber.

Guillot was fascinated by the variety of movements he observed as a climber adapts to the rock face he is seeking to conquer. Now, using professional dancers he is creating aerial ballets based on techniques at the rock face.

The company has performed high up on vertical cliffs as waves crash below, and skimming the water as they dangle from a bridge.

Oxford’s ‘rock face’ was a stone wall in Castle Square, where we saw a routine carried out by a single dancer, Olivia Cubero, who is trained both in circus arts and dance. In Guillot’s works dancers are suspended by a harness, firstly for safety, but also allowing them to swing away from the surface and move freely.

Olivia told me after the show that it’s very important to know the texture of the wall, in order to adapt the work accordingly. Stone is best, brick is all right. What she dreads most is the solid glass of a contemporary office block, which gives no grip to the feet.

She only found out which wall she was performing on shortly before the show, and had to learn quickly the placings of windows that had to be avoided. All the same there was no holding back in her performance. Starting slowly she moved up the wall, using it as her dance floor, so that from the audience one felt one was looking down from above at a dancer on a stage.

Large projections of Cubero in action merged with the live dancer to fascinating effect. The main cable supporting her turned out to be elasticated, as it would be for a bungee-jumper, and soon she was flying, floating, diving, rising again to the top of the wall in a continuous flow of free movement, in which the wall showed itself to be the climber’s friend, not, as in rock-climbing, her antagonist.