Reconsidering What It Means to Be a Company, and Building an Ecosystem
Interviewees: Melanie Precious (Executive Director), Lucie Mirkova (Lead – Skills and Leadership), Will Bridgland (Producer)
Date: February 26, 2026
What Candoco is currently undertaking is the work of reconfiguring its own role while holding onto its legacy as a long-established company. Grounded in the founding belief that difference enriches the vocabulary of dance, it is now re-examining deeper questions: Who makes decisions? Who is being supported? What has the company made possible, and what might now need to evolve for the next stage of Candoco’s work?”
What emerged here was not only a conversation about how performance is made. It was also about how the structures of decision-making, employment, support, access, and evaluation themselves might be rethought. Candoco’s current position can be understood as a long-established inclusive dance company reflecting on how artistic decisions, support, access and leadership can be held in more distributed and sustainable ways.
Difference Changes the Vocabulary of Dance
At Candoco’s origin was a critical awareness that performers with disabilities were largely absent from world-class stages. Yet this was never simply a welfare-driven idea of creating participation opportunities for people with disabilities. For its founders, what mattered was that when different bodies and movement languages enter the stage, dance itself becomes richer as an art form.
“Candoco began from the fact that performers with disabilities were not visible on major stages around the world.
But for the founders, it was not only about creating opportunities for participation—it was about making dance itself more interesting, richer. Difference expands the vocabulary of movement.”
That founding principle connects directly to the company’s current restructuring. Historically, inviting prominent non-disabled choreographers made sense as a way of bringing work into mainstream stages. But after 35 years, as other organizations have developed and as the diversity of experiences of artists with disabilities has become more visible, Candoco has begun to ask difficult questions. “How might Candoco now create more space for disabled choreographers and creative leaders to shape future work more centrally?” How might a wider range of disabled artists and creative voices be brought into artistic and organisational decision-making in more visible and structured ways?
If Candoco is to fully embrace the belief that difference transforms dance vocabulary, then that difference must appear not only in bodies on stage, but also in choreography, curation, leadership, and organizational structures. Its restructuring begins there.
Distributing the Function of Artistic Direction
For many years, Candoco worked with a leadership model involving Artistic Directors and an Executive Director. This model has been an important part of the company’s history and development. At this point in Candoco’s evolution, however, the company is reflecting on whether the different functions of artistic direction — including curatorial vision, artistic decision-making, artist support and sector advocacy — might be held in more distributed ways.
“Artistic direction is necessary. But does it need to exist in the form of a single traditional role?
For us, the function of artistic direction is still needed—but it felt like time to rethink how that role operates.”
Behind this was also a broader question about the role of Artistic Director itself. Across the sector, artistic leadership roles often carry a very wide range of responsibilities, from vision and programming to fundraising, advocacy and talent development. Candoco is considering whether these functions can be shared more sustainably.When organizational vision, programming, fundraising, institutional navigation, and talent development are concentrated around one charismatic individual, burnout and instability can follow. If inclusivity is truly a value, Candoco believed that the distribution of power and resources must also be questioned.
This led to another key idea: understanding themselves not as founders, but as custodians.
“We are not the founders. We are custodians of this company—we are holding it temporarily.
Candoco cannot become something entirely different every time leadership changes.”
Rather than relying on any single leadership transition to determine the company’s direction, Candoco is seeking to articulate its legacy clearly and develop structures that can support continuity, renewal and shared responsibility.
As part of this, it is moving away from talking about a leaders ‘artistic vision’ and toward a model in which assemblies are created, working with a framework of a Candoco Curatorial Statement used when curatorial decisions need to be made.
“Whenever curatorial decisions are needed, we will convene an assembly of the people required for that process.
We are also creating clear frameworks around who participates and what authority they hold.
Alongside artists with disabilities, we are articulating guiding principles for selecting work and projects, which will be published alongside ethical frameworks for decision-making.”
Candoco is therefore building not only ideals, but mechanisms of implementation. Who takes part in decisions? What authority do they hold? How centrally are voices of artists with disabilities included? The company is exploring how artistic decision-making can be supported by clear frameworks, shared expertise and different perspectives, rather than being located only in one formal role.The company is attempting to move decision-making away from being personal or charismatic, and toward something structurally sustainable.
From Company to Ecosystem
Another major shift was the movement away from a fixed ensemble company model toward becoming a producing organization.
Since the pandemic, Candoco has already moved away from employing dancers full-time, instead creating work through project-based contracts. Yet mentally and structurally, it had still imagined itself as a company.
“We still imagined ourselves as a company. But as touring conditions in the UK became increasingly difficult, we had to ask whether employing five to seven dancers each year was truly changing the environment for artists with disabilities more broadly.”
In the traditional model, a small number of dancers were selected into Candoco and given opportunity. While transformative for some, this model necessarily meant that only a small number of artists could be directly supported at any one time.While transformative for some, this could also become a locked door for many others outside.
Candoco is now shifting toward a role where it does not primarily own work, but supports choreographers and dancers with disabilities in reaching wider artistic worlds.
“We are moving from being an ensemble company toward becoming a producing organization.
Going forward, we want to select D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent choreographers, and support them in making work with the dancers they choose.
Rather than being a locked door, we want Candoco to function more like a revolving door—where more people can move through it, then fly outward.”
In this sense, Candoco becomes less like a closed company, and more like a hub within an ecosystem. Digital commissions, residencies, podcasts, youth development, and fellowships create multiple entry points through which artists can engage.
A particularly symbolic initiative is the Candoco Fellow. This is a paid structure through which artists with disabilities work within Candoco, contribute to programming and creation, and build leadership experience. It is not simply an artist residency. Fellows are positioned not only as recipients of support, but as people helping shape the direction of the organization itself.
This also becomes a learning process for Candoco. Supporting artists with disabilities as leaders requires rethinking employment environments and accessibility from within. Knowing inclusive practice is not the same as being able to operate an inclusive workplace. Candoco is treating that difference as its own responsibility.
Open Spaces Also Require Clarity and Discipline
One especially interesting aspect of Candoco’s reflections was its honesty in speaking about accessibility and care without idealizing them.
Through recent productions and touring experiences, the company learned that access needs do not simply overlap—they may also conflict.
“Access needs don’t only overlap. Sometimes they conflict.
We can’t say we have all the answers just because we are seen as a leading organization.
We don’t always know—but we try to do our best each time.”
This led to the idea of collective access—ensuring accessibility is not carried by a single staff member, but shared across the wider company. Travel fatigue, breaks, energy management, and creating an atmosphere where someone can say I need rest all become part of artistic practice. But some artists might also say ‘I need more. I need and want virtuosity’. Every artist is different. This is why we celebrate difference.
Creating safe space does not always mean making everything fluid. Sometimes predictability—clear schedules, breaks, expectations, and workload—creates greater security. Candoco is trying to hold both openness and clarity, care and discipline, together.
Who Decides What Quality Means?
Ultimately, this restructuring also led to a deeper question: Who defines quality?
Candoco is now considering supporting productions not only in large theatres, but also in smaller venues and non-theatre spaces. This does not imply lower quality. Budget size and venue scale do not determine artistic value.
“What matters is the quality of artistic inquiry. Budget or venue size does not determine quality.
Whatever the scale, what matters is the depth of the artistic question.”
Yet whenever quality is invoked, questions of power follow. Who decides what quality means? Are those in historically authoritative positions the only ones who define excellence? How do younger artists, or artists with disabilities not yet widely recognized, enter those systems of judgment?
Candoco’s move toward assemblies and clearly articulated selection principles is part of an effort to make artistic decision-making more transparent, shared and responsive to different forms of expertise.
At the same time, another key idea was expressed:
“Dance by people with disabilities is not a genre.
We choose to ringfence opportunities for disabled artists because they face structural barriers.
We do not want to contain artists with disabilities within a separate category.”
Artists with disabilities may be harder to find, support, or commission because of structural barriers. That is why support remains necessary. But the long-term aim is not a permanent exceptional category. It is a world in which artists with disabilities are selected, supported, and valued through artistic inquiry and practice—not because they are placed within a separate framework.
This reveals one of the deepest tensions within inclusive dance: acknowledging that specific support is needed, while ensuring that support itself does not become another form of containment. Candoco’s restructuring shows a willingness to hold that tension rather than avoid it.
■ Research Notes
Candoco’s questions expand inclusive dance beyond performance-making and into questions of power structure.
Who is supported by having a company? Who remains outside it? Whose voices have been centered through roles like Artistic Director? Who decides quality?
This is not simply organizational change. It is an attempt to hold a legacy without abandoning it, while reconfiguring the structure itself for the next era.
For Japan as well, Candoco’s questions are significant. To genuinely support diversity on stage, it may not be enough simply to create inclusive performances. It may also require transforming the structures that determine who decides, who is supported, and who is able to move forward next.