WAYS OF KNOWING

performance for theatres, 2023

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A descent into darkness, a cloud of unknowing, a startling revelation. A choreographic collage of methods for predicting the future.

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Can we ever know what will come to pass? Can an act of prediction bring the future into being? Reading the runes and crunching the data, award-winning artists Emergency Chorus delve into the ways we forecast, calculate, sense, predict and prophesy the future.

 

Ways of Knowing comprises two distinct halves; mirror images of each other, presented back to back. Part one, All the Barometers in the World, looks up to the skies in anticipation of a storm. Part two, The Spelunkers, follows a pair of explorers as they journey underground.

 

An intricate system of detailed choreography, found text and live sound, the work unfolds like a mysterious series of visions and omens. Behold! A council of leeches, a mystic hermit, a Victorian inventor, an economics conference, a dark and dripping cave.

 

Emergency Chorus return to the stage with the premiere of a strange and cloudy choreography, caught between certainty and uncertainty, knowing and unknowing

 

The development of Ways of Knowing has been supported by NDT Broadgate, curious directive, BOLD Elephant, Cambridge Junction, University of Greenwich, South House, and Battersea Arts Centre

 

Conceived and performed by Clara Potter-Sweet and Ben Kulvichit

Sound design & dramaturgy Nat Norland

Set design Blythe Brett

Artistic support Charlie Ashwell, Karen Christopher

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Photos Tamsin Drury

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Upcoming dates:

30 November - 02 December 2023 / Camden People's Theatre

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Previous dates:

01 October 2022 / Emergency at Contact, Manchester [work-in-progress]

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