Candoco Dance Company has been commissioned for Unlimited, a project celebrating disability, arts, culture and sport as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Choreographer Claire Cunningham is working with Candoco making a new work for the company of 12 disabled and non-disabled dancers, including dancers invited from Rio de Janeiro and Beijing.
I was invited to join the company to draw the dancers in rehearsal
The day began with a morning class
Claire immediately creates a sharing and sensitive atmosphere by asking everyone in the studio to speak in turn for 1 minute about anything they want, the only limitation is that the words spoken most go no further than that room. Many of the 1 minutes are filled with very personal heart felt words, I find I talk very fast tripping over my words, so much I want to say – how many words can be spoken in 1 minute? At the close I feel light headed was it because I haven’t taken a breath or because I released the words instead of boxing them up inside my head?
The dancers were each given a crutch to work with in the rehearsal
The first performance will be at Trinity Laban on 29th February