Celeste talked to UKP-Arts about what led her to combine skills from her training with a new way of thinking about movement and set up the CandoCo Dance Company.

I started when I was two and a half, I did ballet, like most kids do but I knew by the time I was leaving school that ballet wasn't quite my thing. I didn't know what I wanted to do because in the sixties there wasn't an awful lot of choice and contemporary dance was only just beginning to make an impact in England.

I watched a class of the Martha Graham technique and fell in love with contemporary movement. It felt much more earthy and much more real to me, and also it was bare foot which appealed a great deal because point shoes were taking their toll! So I did a summer school and then was one of the first full-time students in 1968 when I was 16 and so that's how I started.

I had quite a short career because I had an accident when I was 22. Of course I thought like anybody else would at that time, that dance wouldn't be an option for me any more because I was trained in a very rigid idea that you needed legs that worked and arms that worked and that dancers don't use wheelchairs.

Well I never really considered it at all for all that time, I did lots of other things but when you have an injury that's that devastating, and you absolutely can't do what you did before, it takes years in a way to feel more comfortable with yourself anyway physically.

It was at the end of 1989 that a friend of mine - who is a choreographer and director and dancer - Darshan Singh Bhuller, was making a dance film, The Fall, for the 10x10 series on BBC2 and he asked me if I wanted to dance in his film. I thought what do you mean dance? I suppose in a way I was ready for a challenge of some description and we talked about it. It was loosely based on me, about a dancer who had an accident and reflects back over her life with different dancers at different ages playing me. I think that was the beginning for me. I was sort of intrigued to see what I could do as somebody who had all that training from the past, how could I translate that now to my body using a wheelchair? We spent a lot of time in the studio trying things out and I think realised that if you move even a small hand gesture or a turn of the head, if it was done with integrity and honesty it was as much dance as anybody leaping around.

I met Adam Benjamin who, as a mature student, was doing visual art and dance at Middlesex University. We met at an integrated sports and leisure centre and he had seen the 10X10 film and was interested in education for everybody. It seemed the perfect setting to start a class, which would be open to anybody who was interested in dance movement - just to see what we could do as a group of people with very different physicalities. So we started a class at one end of the gymnasium. At this point there was no real intention to create a company but very soon the work we were doing was so very creative we started to choreograph small works ultimately resulting in the birth of CandoCo in 1991.

CandoCo Dance Company is an integrated, professional, contemporary dance company, and when I mean integrated I mean that disabled and non-disabled dancers work in a very equal way. The company has a very busy performance schedule and also parallel to that runs the education programme, which is very important as well. We tour nationally and internationally. Adam Benjamin and I both co-directed until 97 when he left, so I was the sole artistic director and a performer with the company until 1999 when I stopped performing, as I needed to concentrate on the direction.

I discuss with the dancers who they are interested in working with outside of our own choreographers. From the outset I was very keen to invite professional choreographers to come in and work with the company, which was a challenge - not only to us but to them as well. It was important because I think the choreographers, although slightly nervous to begin with working with an integrated company - how would they actually create dance? Would the work be compromised in any way? found very much that it wasn't compromised, that we have always aspired to making excellent quality artistic work. I think the choreographers then take away a lot more information - I think they learn from each other and I think that has a direct response in their work, working with other companies it opens up the field I think for them and makes them more creative.

I think it was probably a year or two after we started performing and I was in the wings during a piece. There were 2 dancers - 1 non-disabled and 1 disabled, in fact his name is David Toole and he in effect has no legs, but he has the most beautiful long arms and he does the most extraordinary movement. He walks on his hands and balances on one, a very talented performer. I was watching a duet choreographed by Siobhan Davis who's a very well known contemporary dance choreographer, and I thought 'this is a very beautiful piece I'm watching and they are so talented'. I was convinced by this point that what we were doing was right!