Adam Benjamin is the co-founder of Candoco Dance Company. The blurb on the company’s site announces that it’s a “world-leading professional and inclusive dance company, continually expanding perceptions of what dance can be”.
Benjamin and Celeste Dandeker-Arnold launched the company in 1991 following workshops at London’s Aspire Centre for Spinal Injury. Today, it is no longer rare to see inclusive performances of all types, but in 1991 this was pioneering work. Also, the company’s directors included able-bodied dancers in the company, and lobbied other dance companies to consider involving disabled dancers in their productions.
Benjamin – who is non-disabled – choreographed and danced with the company until 1996, and then directed its education programme. Education – teaching, workshops, writing – is central to his working life today. At the beginning of November, he will visit Italy again for a workshop and conference (Danza Senza Limiti/Dance without Limits) in Gallarate near Milan. This follows a collaboration with the dance company Aterballetto (Fondazione Nazionale Della Danza/ National Dance Foundation) which will be renewed next year.
I asked Benjamin how an non-disabled man became involved in companies and workshops with disabled people.
It wasn’t ever on my radar, but the events of my early life seemed to prepare me or to have schooled me to view the world in a particular way.
I was a post-war baby, born into a socialist, humanist, Jewish family, growing up in a very non-Jewish part of London, so I was aware early on of being an outsider. My father was a pioneer of the adventure playground in the UK and my mother was an artist and costume designer, so my early years were full of creativity – of making and breaking in equal measure. My mother died when I was 8 years old, and my father remarried a remarkable West Indian – so I was living multiculturalism before it became a word.
I trained quite late on, in dance and fine art, and believed my future was to be an artist, until a chance encounter with Celeste Dandeker, a disabled woman who came to a tai chi class I was teaching. Celeste had been a professional dancer with the London Contemporary Dance Theatre until an accident left her using a wheelchair. It was really curiosity about what Celeste might be able to achieve that spurred me, and it was the research we did together that led to the formation of CandoCo.
The name CandoCo was inspired by the words “Can do, company”. I wondered what drew disabled people to dance when their physical condition put so many difficulties in their way.
Why climb Everest?
But really is dancing difficult because of a disability? I guess that is only a question that comes up if you have a limited vision of what dance is. In the west it’s very easy to believe that ballet is really dance and everything else is something less. The reality is ballet is a tiny slither of dance, beautiful and refined but a bit like confusing icing with the cake. I have been to places where the entire village, young and old, strong and weak, disabled and not, all dance – dance lifts the whole community, it’s not difficult unless our culture makes it so.
Reading reviews of performances by, or interviews with, disabled dancers, journalists and interviewees use words like ‘brave’ and ‘courageous’. Are there disabled people you have worked with who have had problems putting their disability ‘on show’?
Most disabled people are ‘on show’ all the time. Try going into a restaurant with a friend in a wheelchair and you’ll see immediately what I mean. The question is whether a disabled person feels able to give you or me permission to watch, and that’s a very different and empowering position to be in – because it then becomes a choice.
Have you had negative reactions from audiences?
Sure – one critic in the States refused to come to the show, stating in their review that they didn’t condone ‘victim art’. Not having seen the company – but by their own admission viewing disabled people as victims – gave away their own prejudiced and jaundiced world view.
Apart from this, I have often given critical feedback to companies, because apart from the misguided response [like that of the American critic], one of the most important and necessary things for inclusive companies is to hear what works and what doesn’t. The problem is that you have people who just react to the fact that there is a disabled person on the stage and are not able to separate this from what that person is doing, i.e. whether or not the work is of interest, whether it challenges, whether it informs. This can sometimes leave artists working in a ‘bubble’ where they are being applauded for being disabled.
They get an easy ride?
Some people refuse to consider them as genuine artists, or they confuse sympathy with empathy – both are positive human feelings but the former dwells in feeling sorry for someone, the latter in understanding, and therefore understanding what that artist is trying to say. If you are genuinely empathetic as a reviewer or friendly critic, you are then in a position to offer feedback that helps the artist to develop.
I saw a performance recently in Seoul, led by one of the dancers I worked with in South Africa years ago. It was a great piece – mostly – but it had what I thought were two real flaws, and after the show I asked them if they wanted some feedback. They were hungry for a critical friend and I was able to talk openly with them about where the problems were, and why I thought they were problems. I could only wonder, why no one had pointed out these things to them before they put the show on the road.
The Italian disabled dancer Chiara Bersani was interviewed for a documentary about Carla Fracci last year. I heard many negative comments from the ‘ballet crowd’ about her inclusion.
I think you have to remember that ballet is in many respects about the illusion of perfection, and that people who go to ballet are hugely invested in this ‘perfect world’.
I don’t want to go into too much depth here, but the female ballet dancer is an extraordinarily sanitised version of a woman. Chiara reminds us, by her very presence, of imperfect bodies, of things that can grow in different ways – she is not a homogenised body, she is other, she is everything the balletomane wishes consciously or unconsciously to deny.
I’d say it’s healthy to feel uncomfortable, as long as it’s accompanied by some degree of reflection, and then to place that discomfort in a worldview that considers the consequences of uniformity versus the benefits of diversity. Then maybe there’s a discussion to be had and in the end that is what all of the work is about – it’s about starting discussions about how we connect, and who we can connect with.
You have worked in many situations all over the world. What has given you the most satisfaction?
Working in South Africa, working with Nelson Mandela’s choir on the show The Querist’s Quire [Benjamin was the artistic director of Tshwaragano Dance Company in South Africa] was probably one of the highlights of my career – a multi-race, integrated company in the years following the fall of Apartheid.
What is challenging you now?
Right now, I’m working in Germany on a project called Stilles Erbe (Silent Legacy) that looks at post-World War II trauma, for the generation that grew up in the shadow of the Nazis.
There is a lot going on with the work you are doing, and in dance in general where inclusivity is becoming a normal topic of conversation, companies are thinking about the balance of what we see on stage in their programming, and there are more opportunities for the marginalised. How have ‘we’ progressed since you started in this field of work?
There has been enormous progress in all areas. In response to your first question about my involvement as a non-disabled man – it’s a long time since I have been invited to speak at a conference in the UK as the speakers these days are disabled artists. The work has spread in many ways – disabled dancers are to be seen on TV, at Olympic ceremonies. Disabled artists are increasingly making their own work, are engaging in new fields of collaboration. Critics – at least in the UK – are accustomed to reviewing inclusive dance, so there is a far less uncertainty and as a result the work has got better.
‘Training’ and ‘Education’ remain very hard nuts to crack, and will continue to be, as long our universities are driven by profit, as long as the dance industry is seen to be of greater importance than the art of dance, and as long as we continue to confuse the icing with the cake.
Dance without limits: dance is for everyone
On Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 November 2024, at the MA*GA Museum and Proscaenium, two days of meetings, and theoretical and practical considerations on “dance without limits”, a dimension in which dance is for everyone, regardless of age, ability, special needs, culture and social background.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.