James Wilton Dance bring their new show The Four Seasons to Horsham’s Capitol

Using Max Richter’s recomposed version of Vivaldi’s seminal work The Four Seasons, the company is promising a work of “immense physicality, driving energy and sweeping beauty”, featuring their signature blend of capoeira, acrobatics, martial arts and classical dance, alongside “stunning” stage and costume designs.

Still at the heart of the company is the dynamic on which it was founded 12 years ago.

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Company founder James explains: “I graduated in 2009 and set the company up in 2010. As soon as I graduated, I knew that I wanted to create work to tour and to be doing my own work, and having the company was the natural vessel to do that, between myself and Sarah, the company co-director.

“I come at things from a more choreographic background and she is much more of a dancer than I am. My background is also martial arts and sport.

“She has been doing ballet and dance and she was three years old. She is much more of a thoroughbred dancer than I am while I came into it a bit later.

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“And I think as a company we are driven by the balance between the two of us. I have a very physical, very broad, very athletic, very sports driven approach to creating movement while she has this wonderful sense of expansiveness and articulation and music. When you put the two things together it’s really exciting the vocabulary that we create, the vocabulary that comes out which is really athletic but simultaneously poetic and we just wanted to create work that responded to that.”

Between them they have created work which has had seven dancers and six dancers and even many, many more but for this latest piece they are offering a duet as they emerge from the pandemic.

“The pandemic was an interesting process and a challenging process. At first we struggled because we’re so used to touring and that was such a big part of our lives. We were used to being on the road going to new places all the time and meeting new people and having that taken away, it was really strange to be spending time in our own beds, far longer than we have ever done before. It felt really strange to be waking up in the same place all the time.

“From 2016 until the beginning of 2020 we were doing 50-60 shows in seven or eight different countries a year and it took its toll on the body because it’s so physical. I really did feel like I needed to rest. In the last stages of 2019 I had a bit of a knee issue and so in that respect it was good to have some time away from it and I’m now feeling better than I’ve ever done before.

“It was interesting that towards the end of 2019 I was thinking that this might be my last tour. But I had the time off to recuperate and have had pretty much two years away from it now, away from that punishing schedule of touring and I just feel so much better.”

In fact it’s great to be back on the stage from every respect: “I have to say that the first show that we did coming back last year was at the Latitude Festival on a stage in a lake and there were 2,000 or 3,000 people there watching, and just the emotion of getting out there and performing was indescribable, just to be back on the stage in front of an audience again.

“It was like the real experience.

“We were so used to wearing masks and distancing and we were masked up when we went in but then to get back onto this festival stage it was just a real riot of colour and life and emotion.

“We were on stage in front of a couple of thousand people and I think it’s probably like the best performance experience I have ever had.”

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