Britain's CandoCo: the little company that could.

The history of CandoCo is a story of courage, perseverance, outreach, and great warmth. Like the facets and depths of a diamond, this dance company gives new views and insights into the meaning of dance and also of the word integration ("the process of making whole or entire," as Webster has it).

In the 1970s, during a performance by London Contemporary Dance Theatre (LCDT), a young dancer came down badly from a handspring and snapped her neck. The fall left her paralyzed. Today that dancer, Celeste Dandeker, is performing again, nimbly moving about the stage but now in a wheelchair. She is cofounder-director of CandoCo, Britain's most successful group of abled and disabled dancers. The company, created in 1991, has taken the dance world by storm and was chosen to open dance festivals in the north of England and in London earlier this year and to win coveted awards. In the late summer and fall, the company of eight dancers, three of them in wheelchairs, gave thirty-three performances and forty-six days of workshops in five countries.

"Obviously my life changed dramatically after the fall, in relationships, daily living, and purpose," says the tiny, elfin-faced Dandeker during a rehearsal break in the company's airy but shabby studio in a north London community center. Above her, pink party streamers dangled from the ceiling, and a faded cutout sign told of a neighborhood festivity long ago. "I couldn't give in to sympathy and self-pity," she continued. "I had to find reasons to go on. Happily, I have wonderful friends who have helped and encouraged me." Dandeker filled her early days after regular visits for physiotherapy treatment with sculpting and reading to the blind. When she moved with her sister to rural Herefordshire, she had dreams of setting up a handicrafts cottage industry. "I soon discovered that the countryside was not for me," she said, laughing, "and quickly returned to London. I did pay a few visits to LCDT to watch classes and rehearsals. I needed to do it, but it was hard." Then she took her artistic talent in a different direction and signed on for a costume design course at a local college, which resulted in an assignment to create costumes for several dance companies.

In 1990, Darshan Singh Bhuller, one of Britain's top young contemporary choreographers, invited Dandeker to make a semi-autobiographical television dance film with LCDT called The Fall. It won acclaim for its sensitivity and ability to convey its difficult content. It also won the attention of a thoughtful young man, Adam Benjamin, who had received a degree in dance from Middlesex University. Benjamin, whose interests included Japanese and Chinese movement and who was a member of a Jewish folk dance troupe, saw The Fall when he was working as artist-in-residence at the Heaffey Centre in London, an integrated recreation center funded by ASPIRE (the Association for Spinal Injury Research, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration). Watching the various activities offered, Benjamin was struck by the fact that the abled and disabled worked separately in the sports hall.

"Sports is all about competition," he states, "and consequently it is not feasible to have both groups working together. But the very nature of dance is to hold contradictions, and I suddenly felt that it could be a medium in which the abled and disabled could blend. I had watched The Fall and thought much about its message. And since Celeste was a committee member of ASPIRE, I went to her to discuss the possibilities of getting people of all levels of physical disability involved with abled dancers in a truly integrated dance program. And by that, I mean the Latin derivation of to integrate, which shows that neither part is a 'whole' without the other, is incomplete without the other. That is true integration."

For several weeks Dandeker and Benjamin exchanged ideas and held discussions with people in both dance and disability fields about the possibility of setting up such a dance workshop at Heaffey Centre. They realized that their project would force not only them but everyone who saw it to face up to and cast away long-held opinions, and reassess his or her own view of what dance is really about. They were encouraged by the changing view of dance. It was no longer the image of pristine, perfect (white) "bodies beautiful" nor of uniformity in style, but an opportunity for dancers of all shapes and sizes to express themselves in their own way. Now Dandeker and Benjamin wanted to develop these views even further, not merely by offering a class for the disabled with a token group of dancers "helping," but rather, a class where each individual challenged his or her ability to accomplish more, to say, "I can do it" (hence the name).

After about three weeks they held their first class, and attracted a group that included some disabled people. These once-a-week classes proved a great success, and they opened up a new world for many. One student was Jonathan French. Five years ago, he was set to become a structural engineer, and after getting his degree he had worked enthusiastically for five months in a London office. Then a car accident put him in a wheelchair. "I didn't know which direction I was going to take," he says quietly one morning while we wait in a local cafe for the caretaker to come and open up for class. "Then I saw an ad in the paper about Celeste's class and, though I'd never ever seen dance before, I went along. I was amazed when, at the beginning of the class, Adam tipped Celeste out of her chair onto the floor. Then he did it to me, and we started our exercises, not in the chair but on the floor. I really enjoyed the evening and continued to attend. One of the students who attended was studying dance at college and choreographed a piece for some of us as part of her final examination. We performed it and were well received, and that's how the company got started. I then had to make my choice: to either go back to an office job with my old firm or become a full-time company member of CandoCo, which is what I did!"

The other disabled member of the company, David Toole, is, as everyone says, "amazing." Though he has no legs at all, he seems to spend as little time in his wheelchair as possible. Rather, by using his strong arms, he fearlessly hurtles across the floor, turning and tumbling like a whirling dervish, and when he lifts his body off the ground, he appears to fly. He has a strong personality onstage, a natural ability to command, and a great sense of fun. Today, his talents are sought not only as a dancer but also as an actor (he played Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream with an opera group this summer).

Toole, like French, knew nothing of dance until an old schoolmaster showed him a flyer about CandoCo's weekend workshop in his hometown of Leeds, and he somewhat reluctantly signed up. "Dancing to me meant formation wheelchair dancing, which, at school, we thought was for sissies," he said with a grin. He was working for the post office at the time and unable to attend the Saturday session. But an encouraging phone call from the company that night led him to "have a go" on Sunday. "I was immediately inspired by what Celeste and Adam were demonstrating," Toole recalls. "I felt a bit shy at first, did what I was told to do, and stayed put in my chair. So they all thought that I couldn't move on my own. You can imagine how their jaws dropped when suddenly I charged across the room to get something!"

The five other members of CandoCo are no less special because they are able-bodied. Helen Baggett and Lea Parkinson were members of the very first classes, while Kuldip Singh-Barmi, Sue Smith, and, more recently, Charlotte Darbyshire met the company at workshops in the north of England when they were at college. All five of them not only demonstrate considerable individual talent as contemporary dancers but also collectively display fine inner qualities that permeate their dancing and bring not only deep love and respect for their work and teammates but also much fun and laughter.

Benjamin, a codirector with Dandeker, has recently retired from dancing to become the company's resident choreographer (and occasional instant ramp builder when theater facilities do not accommodate wheelchairs). He has worked hard to establish CandoCo on Britain's dance map, determined that its standards should be as high as other contemporary companies'. An astute writer, especially of his views on disability, he had made the case for true integration in several magazines. He masterminds the company's workshops, which are held all over the country. Through CandoCo's work, many people are recognizing the positive elements of disability. As preconceived views are slowly changing, limitations have been removed, and wheelchair users, stretched to their own personal limits, are able to make unique contributions to the group.

In Britain today there is more awareness of people with special needs, but there is still much to be done. The token ramp or more-accessible toilet does not automatically include the disabled into "normal" everyday life. Benjamin constantly seeks ways of improving the situation, even to seeing the full integration of disabled people in the study of dance, with the possibility of one day witnessing the first B.A. in dance awarded to a wheelchair user.

At the start of the season, the company was learning Benjamin's new ballet, A Flock Apart, based on a poem he wrote. The words are also to be signed, and a jolly, smiling signer named Izzie Schlizzelman comes to teach the dancers. The choreography for one brief moment of the work takes around twenty minutes to set. Benjamin acknowledges that he likes to take risks, so the movements of dancers and wheelchairs have to be carefully plotted. It's not unknown for noses, limbs, and heads to come into sharp contact with the swiftly moving metal. The choreography, which depicts parallels between the experiences of the Jewish and the disabled, has one fast sequence when chairs and dancers fly past each other at an alarming speed that makes one's knuckles go white.

It is to the company's credit that such noted choreographers as Siobhan Davies, Darshan Singh Bhuller, Emilyn Claid, and American Jodi Falk are creating works for them. Claid, tall and thin with a blond crew cut a U.S. Marine would envy, is Britain's most controversial choreographer. Her piece, Back to front with side shows, is a disturbing and sinister work presumably about the world of pimps and prostitutes. Toole is the evil ringleader who careens around the stage on his arms or else commands from his chair with the raise of an eyebrow. Singh-Barmi and French get involved in a brutal fight on the floor, wheelchairs and occupants are tipped over, and the women flaunt their eroticism. "I felt that I must challenge the company with a work that they wanted to do," says Claid, "one exciting and dramatic and not one that would give them nice, predictable movement. It's all about breaking through barriers, of believing that disability means 'being able to.'"

And that is exactly what CandoCo is proving.