James Wilton
About
James Wilton Dance is a UK based, multi award winning dance company touring super physical, athletically inspiring work nationally and internationally
James Wilton Dance was founded in 2010.
The company has won awards at the Bern, Hannover and MASDANZA International Choreography competitions and the Sadler’s Wells Global Dance Contest.
The company’s first full evening work Last Man Standing (2014) was performed 78 times and won an award at the Bern Tanzprize in Switzerland. Subsequent productions LEVIATHAN (2016) and The Storm (2018) toured even more extensively, achieving close to 200 performances between them, including sold out runs at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, performances in Germany, Gibraltar, Austria, Peru, Spain, Poland and Sweden. LEVIATHAN was nominated for best dance production at the Manchester Theatre Awards.
James Wilton has created works for Scottish Dance Theatre, Konzert Theater Bern, Theater Münster, Opera Graz, Ballet Hagen and dance company Giessen and has choreographed a work for 50 professional dancers for performances at Millennium and Wembley Stadiums (reaching over 110,000 people in the process).
James Wilton Dance is based in Cornwall, and has been commissioned by more than a dozen venues across the UK, with long term partnerships to create work for the audiences of Hall for Cornwall, Blackpool Grand and DanceEast, among others. Its works have been part of the Rural Touring for Dance Initiative 2017-19, and the upcoming production of iRobot is supported by Applause Rural Touring.
Extensive education work has always gone hand-in-hand with its performance programme, and is central to its mission.
The Shortest Day
Based around the psychological effects on people when they know their time is limited. The Shortest Day places 4 performers in a desperate struggle to survive. To exhaust themselves, force a recovery, then exhaust themselves again. To hurt themselves and each other in an attempt to find hope in a hopeless world. The piece also draws inspiration from the Mayan apocalypse theory, the alignment of the solar system and the crust displacement theory.
Choreographer: James Wilton
Dancers: Kynam Moore, Natasha Cudilla, Sarah Jane Taylor, James Wilton
Reviews
“Physicality at its Finest”
‘The Shortest Day’ was the winner of the 2010 Sadlers Wells Global Dance Contest. The work pushed the four dancers to their absolute limits… ‘The Shortest Day’ had a darker quality, displaying power, desperation and franticness.
“Wilton’s dance language is athletic and forceful, brutal even“
… A mixture of extraordinarily powerful duets, filled with lifts, floor work and jumps and quieter moments where the dancers, often just standing centre stage, entwine their arms in flowing, connected and intimate movement.
Photo Gallery
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