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my name is Rick Rodgers and I joined Candoco officially on the 14th of January, so i've not been working with them very long at all
I've been trained in physical theatre first and foremost and not as a dancer really at all
and that led me into a circus performing career many years ago
and so I spent a lot of my time doing physical theatre doing theme parks and interactive theatre stuff, and then I got into
competition cheerleading which isn't really very well known about in England, but it's big in the United States
and people know form movies like 'Bring It On' and 'Fired Up' and all those sorts of things
so when I then became disabled I was still really into that sport, and I really wanted to find a way to
be able to do this sport again as a disabled person
so I had to work really hard with a couple of people to try and reinvent
cheerleading as a sport for wheelchair users, and I managed to do it
did quite a few national performances here at competitions, and I was invited over to the states, two years running now
to go and perform at the Worlds competition, which is amazing
performing in front of 10,000 cheerleaders
so having just started with the company, i've got to learn loads of rep thats already out there
ad that's been quite difficult, but really fun
I think it's difficult because I am not learning from another wheelchair user, so we're having to adapt all the movement that Dan who i'm
mostly taking over, or Darren, were doing in their bodies to my body,
and also my chair, which is quite an integral part of what I do
we're having to adapt all of the rep to work with a wheelchair and a lot of that has been quite difficult,
and there are times when i've just wanted to get out of the chair, throw it across the room and say 'You try using it!'
because it moves so differently to a dancer on their feet that sometimes it's hard to keep up with the speed and stuff
Stine and Pedro have got into chairs and tried things out to try and give me suggestions or just watched and
little notes all the time, building up, making making it my movements again
for instance with 'Set and Reset', i'm taking over from Dan's role, and Dan has got such
such a unique movement in himself that there's not really any way. I can't move like Dan - theres no way
regardless of whether or not I was on my feet or in my chair, he's got such a special quality
that we've had to work out what it was in the original that he was then adapting to himself, so I've then had to learn
the phrase as it is, and then putting it back into the form that i'm using Dan's facings most of the time, and I enter and exit
where Dan would have. I'm not working from the phrase as it was, and how i've adapted it to put it into the piece
so that it's me dancing and it's not just a 'Dan puppet'