Able and willing

What is the responsibility of a dancer in a dance performance? And do performers all need to look the same for a performance to work? The dancers from Candoco have been asking, and answering, these questions for more than 20 years with the aid of their own bodies - able-bodied and disabled alike.

Candoco Dance Company is a London-based contemporary dance company that employs both disabled and able-bodied dancers. When it was founded in 1991, it was the first professional dance company of its kind in the UK.

This highly-acclaimed dance group became well-known to Chinese audiences in 2008 when performers took part in an 8-minute hand-over act at the Beijing Olympics and the Paralympics closing ceremonies.

London calling

Under the invitation of "UK Now," an ongoing arts event about British culture, Candoco have brought two performance pieces to China. After their performance in Shanghai on April 17 at the Lyceum Theater, they will now take to the stage of the National Grand Theater in Beijing this Saturday and Sunday.

Parallel Lines is a commissioned work to celebrate "Culture Olympia," a huge arts festival that will take place in London during the 2012 Games. Shanghai saw the world premiere of this piece.

It is a dance based on the theme of "lines." The idea came from one of Candoco's choreographers, Marc Brew. To start with, Brew drew lines on a map to connect different countries, including China, Brazil and also the UK, because the dancers in Parallel Lines are all natives of these countries. And then he attempted to "apply" these lines into the bodies of the dancers, that is, to let them create lines with their own bodies.

Pedro Machado, the current artistic director of Candoco, told the Global Times that this dance was inspired by the idea of how people travel. "When you are traveling, you are actually creating lines between different countries, but at the same time, you are also creating lines in your own country, and these are boundaries that separate people and obstruct them from traveling," said Machado.

Wheelchair user

In the staging of Parallel Lines, audiences see 12 dancers creating different shapes of lines with their hands and legs; everyone that is except one performer.

"It is what we intentionally do," said Machado. "The choreographer, Marc Brew, is a wheelchair user, and he wants to illustrate what it is like for a disabled person to get around every day. But we are not doing wheelchair tricks," Machado emphasized. He told the Global Times that the most embarrassing and challenging aspect of their work today is that they aspire to do professional dance work using both disabled and non-disabled performers, and yet there are still audiences who simply want to see wheelchair "stunts."

"In fact, Candoco have featured wheelchair users for 17 years. But now, we want to do something different and new. We try to avoid using wheelchairs except when the needs of a piece demand it," Machado said.

"We know wheelchairs are a daily reality for disabled people, and it is also a very strong visual image on a stage. Audiences expect to see disabled people being 'impressive' on stage, but this isn't very fair on disabled people themselves."

Machado mentioned one of Candoco's early works, Back to Front with Sideshows (1993). It is one of Candoco's most influential works and it brought a lot of attention to the company.

"However, I think the reason why audiences liked it was because it contained lots of moments of sexuality and violence being performed by disabled people. Audiences were not used to seeing disabled people as sexual beings, even though it was only kissing on stage. And they had seldom seen disabled people being aggressive to others, or other people being aggressive to them."

Not just sensationalism

"But the choreographer for this show was at pains to emphasize that she wanted to express more than just sensationalism," Machado told the Global Times.

In Candoco's other work being performed in the city, disabled and able-bodied people perform in tandem to the extent that their disabilities, or otherwise, are not instantly apparent. Machado told us that in this performance, some of the disabled actors use artificial limbs.

With the name of Set and Reset/Reset, this is actually a restaging of an original work by Trisha Brown (the famous American dancer and choreographer) from 1983. This piece was originally performed by an able-bodied cast.

"Through adapting this work we wanted to explore the question of the importance of an individual dancer in a dance work. And do we really need a typical, able-bodied dancer to reflect this?" Machado asked.

Machado has been involved with Candoco for more than 15 years. He told the Global Times that the precursor of Candoco was an art workshop featuring both disabled and able-bodied people.

And at that time one of the founders of Candoco, Adam Benjamin, noticed that in all professional competitions, such as the Olympics, disabled and able-bodied people are segregated.

Machado said the aim of Candoco is to create an environment, or a space, for people who want to express themselves, no matter what their talents.