Collage Conversations

Ben Ash, Company Dancer

Ben Ash (dance artist and company dancer) presents an experimental interview series as Candoco emerges from lockdown and heads back into the studio.

Collage Conversations is a project conceived by Ben during a period of working remotely. At this time, the dancers were tasked with doing some research around Candoco’s 30th anniversary. It was also when the dancers were beginning to work with each other in actual physical spaces again as the UK came out of lockdown. This is Ben’s personal response to coming back to work, getting to know his fellow dancers as a new-ish company dancer, and his own enquiry into Candoco’s archive of work in celebration of the company’s 30th year.

This series explores a broad range of topics, including Candoco’s previous work, the theme of Touch, inclusivity, human rights, things we are good at, and much more…

We invite you to listen to Ben’s introduction and his 10 conversations with Candoco’s company dancers, former Candoco dancer and Rehearsal Director Toke Broni Strandby, apprentice Anastasia Sheldon, PHD student and Candoco collaborator Kat Hawkins and Artistic Director Charlotte Darbyshire. All of the collages created as part of this experiment can be found at the bottom of the page.