CandoCo Dance Company grew out of a weekly open dance class led by Adam Benjamin and myself at an integrated sports and leisure centre in Stanmore, Middlesex, in 1991. With the knowledge we had gained through experimenting by ourselves in the studio previously, we wondered how much more we could achieve as disabled and non-disabled dancers with our very different physicalities.
Experimenting in contact and release work and using other familiar dance techniques, we began to create sequences of movement that led to choreographing short works. Instead of being limited by our different physicalities, we were presented with a rich diversity of individual movement skills that were new and exciting. For disabled dancers, emulating non-disabled partners is unsatisfactory and frustrating, so finding movement for our own bodies and experimenting in solo, partner and group work was what gave us freedom and confidence to explore numerous possibilities. Much of our choreography came from natural, everyday movement that was individual to each of us. In fact, we were developing our own dance language and at the same time pushing the boundaries of more formal techniques.
We were determined at the outset that CandoCo should aspire to excellence and to be seen as a professional mainstream contemporary dance company. The resulting work, which was initially created by the company itself, challenged peoples' perceptions of what dance was and who could do it. The core group had the opportunity to perform the work we created together and it caught the attention of critics, dancers, educators and the public.
Our objective is and always has been, to create high quality artistic work and our aim is to communicate ideas and concepts to an audience. It was important to aim high from the outset, so that there would be no question about our intention. We approached the Arts Council of England for financial help quite early on and they were supportive with project funding initially, and are now our core funders.
One critic advised the company in an early review to invite outside choreographers to work with us and we took this advice, which I have always been grateful for. I think this has been one of our strengths. We invited well-known and respected choreographers like Siobhan Davies, Emilyn Claid, Guilherme Botehlo from Alias Compagnie, Darshan Singh Bhuller and Annabel Arden and Jos Houben from Theatre de Complicite, to choreograph and direct the company. We chose them because their work as choreographers and directors inspired us and we knew they would challenge and push us as artists.
These choreographers rose to the challenge of working with an integrated company and any fears they might have had at the start were soon dispelled once in the studio. In fact some choreographers find that they have more freedom working with us and find new ways of thinking about dance and movement that enriches their vocabulary.
The Company dancers are generally very much part of the process and feel a real sense of ownership of the works produced. Our work has sometimes been seen as provocative and has demanded an emotional and physical response from the audience. We encourage debate, especially in post performance discussions where it is an opportunity for the Company to talk about and articulate their work.
The choreographers for our programme in 2000/01 were Javier de Frutos and Doug Elkins, with both working processes demanding extreme differences of approach both mentally and physically.
The dancers found the intense research for Javier de Frutos's 'I Hastened Through My Death Scene to Catch Your last Act' very different and fascinating. Much of the research was in reading about Tennessee Williams life, his plays and short stories. Although the piece has no narrative, the atmosphere conjures up the frustrated loneliness and sexual tension that many of Tennessee Williams's characters have in their make-up. This research stretched the dancers and equipped them with the framework to form their own characters, and to leave room for these characters to be able to change and grow over the next 18 months of performing the work. Movement evolved from a sequence of arm and upper body phrases that Javier set, and within these phrases there was the freedom for improvisation in dynamics and individual qualities. The music is a dark and strange sound score with songs from the 1959 musical version of Peter Pan that creates an uneasy atmosphere.
In Doug Elkin's 'Sunbyrne', set to music by David Byrne and the Beachboys, the mood couldn't be more different. The dancers found Doug's eclectic mix of break-dance, martial arts, classical and contemporary techniques a complete contrast to Javier's more theatrical approach. It is a piece made up of duets, trios and ensemble work, full of colour and humour, set to great music that leaves the audience in an upbeat mood.
The Company has worked intensively on a triple bill for 2002/2003, which premiered at the National Theatre, Zagreb, in June 2002: Javier de Frutos's 'Sour Milk', with ritualistic and hypnotic repetitive movement phrases set to ancient Chinese percussion; Fin Walker's full company piece called 'Shadow' and Jamie Watton's 'Phasing', which opens the programme with a playful and engaging trio set to Steve Reich's 'New York Counterpoints'.
The three choreographers' different approaches challenged the dancers, and they have learned new skills to enrich and develop them as performers. For example, Fin spent the first two weeks allowing the dancers to improvise under her direction, so that they would become familiar with her instructions and confident to translate her words into physical reactions. By the third week, when Fin began to create the work, the dancers responded quickly and with great imagination and it is gratifying to see them moving on to another level of maturity and sophistication. This kind of training, not only during the rehearsal period but also throughout the year, is invaluable to the individual dancer's development. It equips them to work with a range of choreographers and their different techniques and enables them to translate and adapt the movement to their own bodies.
Company members past and present have been open and committed and have contributed hugely to the success of CandoCo. They take the process of making work very seriously and as a result have grown and developed during these experiences to be accomplished and distinguished performers. Their experiences feed directly into the education programme which runs alongside our busy performing schedule, so that the workshop and residency participants benefit from an ever-growing resource of ideas and concepts. INSET training is at the moment more in demand, which shows the growing interest and determination from teachers to integrate their classes.
Since CandoCo started ten years ago, there is certainly more acceptance of diversity and interest in the dance world today. Training lies at the heart of its further development, and as a company we are wholeheartedly committed to it.
In the future I hope there will be more choreographers and directors who are open and interested to work with dancers with different physicality, as composers write music for a variety of instruments. I hope that there will be many more integrated dance companies that will give opportunities to up and coming disabled dancers. I hope they will have had the opportunity for more formal dance training in order that they are able to pursue their chosen careers as teachers, choreographers and performers.
Celeste Dandeker, artistic director, CandoCo Dance Company. Email: info@candoco.co.uk