If you are interested to find out more, come and join us for a free event on Sunday February 26th, 10.30 – 1.30. It will be a free taster day where you can see our current youth company perform and you will also be able try out our youth dance class! To find out more about the event Click here

Candoco Dance Company runs two Youth Dance groups for disabled and non-disabled young people aged 14-25 years, one based in Camden and one in Lambeth and we would love it if you want to come and join us!

The Spring tour starts in February as we take part in BDE (British Dance Edition) with our restaging project Set and Reset/Reset with Trisha Brown Dance Company at Sadler’s Wells. Next on the list is a six week creation period with Claire Cunningham for our Unlimited Commission, part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

Following our performance at Sadlers our Turning 20 tour kicks off at The Riverfront, Newport. Not only are we inviting you to come and meet us at the performance, we are also taking our wonderful and very popular GCSE and school resource And who shall go to the ball? with us.

‘Better than other packs I have used as it is more detailed. The influence and the ethos of the company is very sound and good for the students.’ Teacher, King Edmund school.

The GCSE resource pack and workshops together with a visit to come and see the performance is a wonderful way for students to experience our work in depth. Giving the students the ability to interact with the work on an intellectual and artistic level as well as on a physical level.

‘Getting to know the dancers and being able to get to know their style and working with and around it has also been interesting, challenging and inspiring knowing that I am constantly learning about myself aswell as learning about others.’ Young workshop participant.

I am currently booking in schools and dance/community groups to take part in our workshops that are taking place alongside our various performance dates throughout Spring.

Should you be interested in finding out more why not email me at anna@candoco.co.uk – I am happy to chat through our workshop offer and various options for you and your students to get involved.

I would love to have your feedback on the video, so if you have a few minutes fill out our online survey. Your help would be much appreciated.

So, 2012 is here and Cando2 are back in rehearsals for ReFresh. Following the rehearsal intensive before christmas the excitement levels have definitely hit a new high now that we are back in the studio and welcoming in a new dancer too, which has brought in a new wave of energy.

“Staying true to our contemporary roots, whilst we embody contagious rhythms and fast moving mouths. The melodies from Kate Prince’s choices will  be reverberating around our heads for the next few months as we continue and their stories become our movement. Now the question is, is this solo one, two or three? Retrace, but don’t miss a syllable!” – Kimberley Harvey, Cando2 dancer.

So, we are back in the office following the festive season, eager to get going with all those New Years resolutions we made for ourselves and Candoco.  One of the great things about a New Year is meeting new people and over the next couple of weeks my diary is packed with first off encounters.

Next week I’m heading South of the River Thames to Laban to give a lecture to Community Dance students on Ideas of Exploding Terminologies – or something like that – essentially asking What is Inclusive Practice? what does it mean for each of those individual artists and the context they are working in right now, compared to when this kind of thinking was instigated.

After that I’m heading across the Bristol channel to Flint in North Wales for an initial research trip prior to a large schools residency and professional development programme that I and some of the other Candoco Artists will be leading this Summer.  And, if that wasn’t enough new people to meet in January, the following week Rebecca and I head up to the other end of the country by the sea to Dundee for Scottish Dance Theatre’s Pathways to the Profession conference.  I’m chairing part of a day on Opening Pathways and look forward to meeting many new faces and of course embracing some old ones.

Not a bad start to one of my personal resolutions for the year – make space for new possibilities – and for one of the Candoco ones – to meet even more people who can effect change.

Hope to see you on the journey.

Luke

On 19 & 20 January 2012 Rebecca Dawson our Executive Director and Luke Pell our Head of Learning and Development are heading to Dundee for the Pathways to the Profession Symposium, organised by Scottish Dance Theatre.

In late January we will then be joined by our five guest dancers from China, Brazil and the UK to start work on our second piece for our Unlimited Commission, part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. We look forward to work with choreographer Claire Cunningham and this exciting cast of twelve dancers.

In early February we are looking forward to be part of British Dance Edition (BDE) – the UK’s leading showcase event profiling the best of British Dance. Our performances of the re-staging project Set and Reset/ Reset with Trisha Brown Dance Company at Sadler’s Wells is set to be a true highlight for the company.

We are wishing everyone a great start to 2012- with the very best wishes for a happy and healthy year to come.

From everyone at Candoco Dance Company.

If you haven’t had the chance to catch our Turning 20 anniversary programme, keep looking out for a date near you as we continue to tour throughout the UK and internationally in 2012. Highlights include performances at Brighton Dome, Tanz! Heilbronn festival/ Germany and a tour to China including performances in Beijing.

Another exciting performance we look forward to will be at Sadler’s Wells, London on 2 & 3 February, where we perform Set and Reset/Reset in a triple bill alongside Wayne McGregor/ Random Dance and Hofesh Shechter Dance Company.

We are preparing for a busy 2012 with a new production by Claire Cunningham for Unlimited, as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad and the Big Dance 2012 week in July, that sees us working with over 100 young disabled and non-disabled performers towards U Dance, a performance at the Royal Festival Hall.

We hope to see you somewhere around the world in the new year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

from Anna and the Team at Candoco Dance Company

Then into 2012! The Olympics and Big Dance come to town and the Youth Dance Company will be taking part in all manner of projects, workshops and performances, so now is the time to get involved and help make it a most fab year for the Candoco Youth Dance Company – I almost wish I was under 25 again!

We have 2 groups based in London

Starting back January 9th 2012:– 

Mondays 5.30pm-7.30pm at
Siobhan Davies Studios
85 St George’s Road
London SE1 6ER

Starting back February 21st 2012:

Tuesdays from 6.00pm-8.00pm at
The Place
17 Duke’s Road
London WC1H 9PY

We are currently looking for Young People to join our groups!

Interested? Want to find out more? Email me, Susie, on youth@candoco.co.uk or come along to one of our classes. You can also go to our Youth Page where we tell you a bit more about what we do and there is also a special Christmas message from our Monday group…

As a DCMS/ Jerwood Creative Bursary recipient I was invited to attend another networking event to allow all recipients to get together to learn and exchange experience.

The event featured interesting talks by Gaby Styles, Head of Development at the Royal Court Theatre and Anne Torreggiani, Director of Audiences London, as well as an ‘open space’ session and a tour of the wonderful TERRA exhibition (well worth seeing!), and of course glorious food! All hosted at Jerwood Space .

All recipients work in different areas and roles within the art sector which enriched our discussions and provided plenty food for thought. Some of the topics covered were:

• Are the arts only sustainable in bigger cities?  We asked ourselves: ‘What can we do to allow the arts to spread across the nation’ (this is of course a very ambiguous question). One answer was to work for example on integrating the arts into the community and educational sectors to allow a better understanding of what the arts can offer.
• How can we, as people working within the arts sector stay connected as a group and as practitioners? We looked at different network forums online and then looked at options available to meet, discuss and share information – something we felt was crucial as communication is very much online based at present.
• What is sustainable? Looking at how the arts sector can be developed to become sustainable both in their existence and how they can support areas of environmental sustainability. Again looking at art being integrated into education as well as giving awareness to our environment as seen, for example in the TERRA exhibition.

As I said, all quite ambiguous questions but important ones to discuss and there were some marvellous, inspiring and sustainable thoughts!

The TERRA exhibition was incredibly inspiring on its own as it tapped into all senses and the sculptures gave a sense of brilliant crafting, creativity and technology/science within every piece. The attention put to every detail within the composition of each sculpture came through the images, textures, smells and sounds they were creating- and it was indeed very difficult to not touch them as I wanted to understand their construction, but as I was in a gallery I had to keep my hands in my pockets…