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Candoco is a world-leading dance company powerfully collaborating in distinctive performances.  It celebrates different ways of seeing, of being and of making art, putting the company at the forefront of conversations around dance and disability.  This double bill used seven dancers, some with impairments, others non-disabled.

 

I have watched many of Candoco’s performances and was particularly struck this time by the similarities with contemporary visual art:  the unfamiliar forms created by one or more unusual body, the combinations in twos or threes, stopping to create a tableaux,  moving to another extraordinary set of movements and relationships, using astonishing sound and lighting, all echo forms of gallery 3D work.  Significantly, there is the element of surprise, the uncanny, the strangeness, the requirement to stretch the mind to relate to what the work is about.  

 

The first piece, called Face In was full of passion, expressed through striking images and daring uninhibited dance, to an urban indie score.  Bright costumes pulled apart, were used to create images, to add extra dimensions, and bodies connected and reconnected.  Voices were used.  After a woman’s particularly daring balance on the back of a wheel chair user another asked (scripted or unscripted?) ‘Are you OK?’ The second piece (Hot Mess - manifesto provided) used circles of grey fabric, and clothes mimicking the everyday.  It was unpredictable and anarchic, and constantly moving, in a kind of installation, individuals taking their turns to appear singly on stage, as ropes and hooks swung from the ceiling, then moving again with the other dancers.

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