Our Vision
We imagine a liberated future where the richness of disability is celebrated, diverse lived experiences are embraced and barriers to engagement in the performing arts are fully removed.
Our Mission
Our mission is to expand the landscape of dance & disability through bold performances and inspiring educational experiences that embody equity and inclusion.
Our Values
Collaboration, Imagination, Learning, Liberation
About Candoco Dance Company
The company, founded in 1991 by Celeste Dandeker-Arnold OBE and Adam Benjamin, collaborates with some of the industry’s most renowned choreographers and artists. We create performance work that is presented at prestigious venues and festivals in the UK and internationally.
In 2018, Candoco created a sensation when it became the first contemporary dance company to appear on the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, performing to over 10 million people. The company also ran a 2-week residential dance training intensive for young disabled and non-disabled dancers supported by fashion retailer ASOS.
In 2022, we have been touring a programme of work that includes Set and Reset/Reset, a Bessie Awarded reimaging of Trisha Brown’s seminal work, to venues including Tate Modern in London and Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York; and have created two new short works with Seke Chimuntengwende and Annie Hanauer.
In 2022/2023, we toured ‘Last Shelter’ a work created during the lockdown in 2021, by Jeanine Durning and Jamaal Burkmar’s duet ‘I think we should start over’, in 2023.
In January 2024 the company welcomed new Co-Artistic Directors, Dominic Mitchell and Raquel Meseguer Zafe, both disabled artists in their own right. Their new vision for Candoco includes creating liberatory spaces – on stage and off stage – and centring the lived experience of disabled people in the making of new work. As their first commission, they invited Dan Daw, a former performer at Candoco, to create a full-length work that will premiere in Spring 2025. ‘Over and Over (and over again)’ by Dan Daw Creative Projects is currently in the creation phase. Rehearsals started last November 2024 and will continue between January and March 2025. We will host a preview performance on 20 March 2025 at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (Brighton), as part of South East Dance’s Undisciplined Festival and then perform at DanceEast (Ipswich) on 4 April 2025 and Sadler’s Wells East (London) from 2-4 July 2025.
For more information please read our Commission Announcement and Co-Artistic Directors’ Full Statement.
