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Ways of Knowingperformance for theatres / 75 minutes / 2023
available for touring

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

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, with this show we 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. The two parts can be performed separately.

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.

Our first new show in 5 years, this work sees us return to the stage with a strange and cloudy choreography, caught between certainty and uncertainty, knowing and unknowing.

Created and performed by: Clara Potter-Sweet and Ben Kulvichit
Sound design & dramaturgy: Nat Norland
Set and costume design: Blythe Brett
Lighting design: Ben Kulvichit
Choreographic support: Charlie Ashwell
Outside eye: Karen Christopher
Technical support: Amy Daniels
Skirt co-design and fabrication: Zoë Frost
Photos: Jemima Yong

The development of Ways of Knowing was supported by NDT Broadgate, curious directive, BOLD Elephant, Cambridge Junction, University of Greenwich, South House, Battersea Arts Centre and Old Diorama Arts Centre.
PREVIOUS DATES> 30 November - 02 December 2023 / Camden People's Theatre, London [premiere]
> 01 October 2022 / Emergency Festival at Contact, Manchester [work-in-progress]

RESOURCES Read a piece of writing from Maddy Costa, responding to Ways of Knowing

Read our blog for Camden People’s Theatre about caving, the unknown, and taking a research trip underground.

Watch our short film Ways of Knowing: two dances, made with Will Hazell as part of the BOLD Makers Award.   A sister piece to Ways of Knowing, featuring early choreographic ideas and restlessly shifting between light & dark, day & night. 



Watch some short BTS clips of us talking about Ways of Knowing ahead of its premiere.

1. What’s the show about?
   
2. Working with choreography
   
3. A piece in two halves

AUDIENCE QUOTES"Thank god for Emergency Chorus for still making work to the beat of their own drum, unlike anything else out there."
- Nikhil Vyas,  director

"Completely unique. At once, opaque and mysterious, and at the same time, very warm and welcoming."
- Andy Field & Beckie Darlington, artists

'So many striking moments, ideas & images that will definitely stay with me for a long time."
- Júlia Levai, director
“A joy of this show is its openness. It is open to interpretation, open to imagination.”
- Maddy Costa, writer and critic 

"Beauty and fear, rocks, drips, beards, strange dances in raincoats and singing. YES, Emergency Chorus!" 
- Rachael Clerke, artist

“Precise, elegant, ridiculous, committed. I don’t see anyone else making work like this in the UK. Understated, unlikely, and so delicious. Bravo!” 
- Paul Paschal, artist