Celeste Dandeker CandoCo Reviews Our CandoCo page CandoCo website

Suzanne McCarthy talks with Celeste Dandeker, artistic director and co-founder of CandoCo, on the eve of the premiere of three new works.

Anyone meeting Celeste Dandeker for the first time would know straight away that she was a dancer. She moves like a dancer and she has the stillness of a dancer. Her wheelchair is her performance space.

Co-founder and artistic director of CandoCo, the UK's first integrated professional dance company, and a world leader in this field, she has always resisted convention. As a girl she knew she wanted to dance, but not ballet. She describes her first sight of a Graham technique class as a revelation. In 1968, at the age of 16, she became one of the London School of Contemporary Dance’s first full time students. She joined the London Contemporary Dance Theatre in 1970.

Five years later her life changed irretrievably. While on tour with LCDT she overbalanced on stage during a performance of Robert Cohan’s work “Stages” and broke her neck. She was only 22 and the effect was devastating. She thought she would never dance again.

Dance was still important in her life, and for 16 years she remained close to the dance world, although not completely of it. However, in 1990 her former LCDT contemporary, Darshan Singh Buller, invited her to take part in a film he was making for BBC2’s 10X10 series. At first she was sceptical. While still fit, she had not danced for years and was confined to a wheelchair. He was not dissuaded, and Ms Dandeker is in her own way a chancer. The result was the award winning dance film, “The Fall”. Another film for CandoCo followed; “Outside In” choreographed by Victoria Marks for the 1993 BBC series Dance for the Camera.

London Contemporary Dance Theatre had instilled in Celeste both an appreciation of discipline and an aim to produce high quality work. She had no interest in being in a company that was merely sidelined into a disability arts category. Her intention from the start was to create a first-rate, contemporary dance company that worked with the best and most challenging choreographers of the day. A list of those who have created work for CandoCo proves her point – Darshan Singh Bhuller, Siobhan Davies, Emilyn Claid, Javier De Frutos and Dough Elkins – to name just a few. The company has won numerous awards.

However, the very fact that CandoCo is composed of disabled and able bodied dancers cannot be ignored. Celeste accepts that there is no point in disabled dancers emulating what an able bodied dancer can do. The key is for the disabled dancer to find their personal dance language. She herself initially wondered whether what was being created could be called dance. She answered that question for herself when a few years after the company was founded she watched from the wings a duet performed by two dancers, one disabled and the other not. In her words, “the movement was so beautiful, good and riveting”, that she was left in no doubt that what was being performed was dance

It is a fair question to ask what attracts able bodied dancers to join CandoCo. In answering this Celeste makes it clear that such dancers join the company for three reasons; the work performed; the company’s openness and unique way of operating; and its high reputation. It is certainly not a desire to dance with disabled dancers.

The company’s dancers are either specially invited to join or audition for a place. Because there is no formal vocational training for dancers with disabilities, many of the company’s disabled members have actually trained with CandoCo’s education team, and Celeste is very determined to stress the importance of the year-round education programme. Education and performance are equal drivers, and company members deliver the bulk of the education work. Simply put, over the last 10 years CandoCo has become the country’s leading laboratory and incubator for talent among dancers with disabilities. Since 1996 over 1,000 education and training sessions have been held involving more than 22,000 participants. There is now also an integrated youth dance company, Cando2.

In fact, of prime importance to CandoCo’s success is its continuing ability to attract choreographers whose work inspires them, and who have the ability to achieve intense emotional and visual impact on stage. The creative process with the company’s dancers is intimate, with each new work (and a new programme is commissioned every 18 months) being specially tailored. The whole process exhibits the CandoCo style where the dancers intensely “own” and develop the work as much as the choreographer. As most choreographers have never worked with disabled dancers before, it takes longer for them to understand and become familiar with the company’s movement potential. Invariably working with the company stretches a choreographer’s dance vocabulary. As one of the dancers remarked at a rehearsal, working with CandoCo was like composing for a different set of instruments.

The downside is that it is virtually impossible to revive earlier pieces once certain company members have departed. This was very much an issue in 1999 when six out of the seven original company members left, a pivotal movement in determining whether CandoCo had an existence beyond a particular set of dancers. The success in recruiting a new group is solid testament to the company’s ability to survive changes in personalities.

In 1993 Celeste approached Siobhan Davies who created “Between the National and the Bristol”, which Celeste describes as “a movement piece, a real dance piece and an extraordinary learning experience for the company”. While working with the dancers Siobhan observed that, although the wheelchair dancers’ movements were at times small, they were very articulate. They knew about weight and where the body had to go to achieve a movement. As with all the company’s work, no compromises were made for the disabled dancers. Celeste hopes to invite Siobhan to work with CandoCo again.

Some pieces performed by the company have had a quirky feel, such as the one made by Guilherme Bortelho in 1996. His very energetic work, “Trades & Trust”, required the company to use running machines and aerial equipment. Other works have had a teasing quality such as satirising wheelchair formation teams.

In contrast, the companion piece, Elkins’ “Sunbyrne”, was witty and joyous, and drew extensively on this choreographer’s tendency to use a range of eclectic movement taken from a variety of sources – the everyday, martial arts, break dance and classical and contemporary dance grammars.

The company’s three new and very contrasting pieces will be premiered in the Spring, and have been created by Jamie Watton, Fin Walker and Javier De Frutos. Watton’s piece is for a trio of dancers, and is very light and movement based. Fin Walker’s is an exciting, driving work, which will be danced to especially composed music. (Live musicians will accompany the dancers for some performances.) The De Frutos piece, called “Sour Milk”, is very different from his previous work for the company. Performed in 19th century period costumes, the whole effect will, Celeste says, be stunning.

Since Benjamin’s departure in 1997 Celeste has been the driving force behind CandoCo, and since 1999 she has stopped dancing and concentrated her efforts on the company’s artistic direction and in giving support to the dancers. Right now her overriding objective is for the company to be placed on a secure financial footing. For the future she sees the company continuing to act as an advocate for, and raise the profile of, integrated dance, and to offer people with disabilities realistic and challenging opportunities to engage in dance.

What CandoCo has vividly demonstrated to the dance world is the wonderful dynamic that exists between art and the diversity of physicality. Long may the company push at the boundaries of our assumptions.