Future Ritual is a practice of gathering, curating and organising. We collaborate with artists to create contemporary expressions of ritual, working to support the emergence of new and more attuned cultures. 

We are based in London (UK).

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A year-long programme cycle exploring performance in times of fragmentation.
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emilyn claid, The Trembling Forest, 2025. Dance International Glasgow, Tramway. Photo by Brian Hartley.

The Trembling Forest

a co-created a process led by emilyn claid, 2025

Summer 2025 Update: We hope to tour The Trembling Forest in Autumn 2026 and Spring 2027 to venues in the UK and abroad. Please direct any enquiries to producing@futureritual.co.uk

Turn your face towards the tombstone blues of left over time, forever, nowhere, nothing time, the crumbling perpetual of graveyards and ashes. Step lightly into long time, still time. Turn up the music and begin a slow dance. Welcome the pale grey, the shivering grey of a longed-for landscape, cold, silent, beautiful, like snow on hills under a darkening sky. Connect with me here, embrace me there, enmeshed, in a dance of twists and turns, like the underground roots of a trembling forest.


Imagined as a Live Art Ballet, The Trembling Forest draws on the spontaneous physicality of live art practices together with the scenic, choreographic structures of balletic traditions. Encounters between this company are staged amidst a forest of queer people, each painted with clay, who crack, shiver, tremble and decay. The Trembling Forest evokes a macabre, surreal, grotesque and beautiful world, where life force and death drive intertwine.

The Guardian: emilyn claid on angry shows, her ballet shame and gardening for Martha Graham



“Trembling Forest stages queerness as a thing in motion — a constant process of unfixing. Weaving moments of connection, curiosity, and negotiation amongst a forest of tender bodies and an extraordinary cast of collaborators, this is a revelatory new work by one of the most exciting performance artists of our time.”

Kit Edwards, Curator, Chapter 

The Chorus
The process of working with the Chorus, who are drawn from queer publics local to the venue, is at the heart of the work.

Undressed, painted with clay slip, the Chorus remain onstage throughout as a decaying, interconnected forest, into which the band of professional performers are drawn.


In London, our chorus were: Carolyn Naish, Chloe D’Allio, Dani Dinger, E.M. Parry, Eliza Cass, Emelia Holdaway, Iona Hannagan Lewis, Lauren Wright, Loren McK, Manuela Albrecht, Matteo Mottram, Piotr Marchewka, Sarah Gottlieb, Stefan John Reekie, Nan Zhu.

In Glasgow, our chorus were: Shannon McInnes, Ruth Burns, Fraser Prent, Bishop May Down, Brock McCullogh, Hannah Le, Amaranthine Craigue, Austin Hughes, Aderayo Adenekan, Suzanne Grier, Noelle Peterson, Hari Martin Harper, Byron Bate, Ethan Pender, Ellis Ludlow, Ezra Coulie, Undram Munkhbats



emilyn claid, The Trembling Forest, 2025. Dance International Glasgow, Tramway. Photo by Brian Hartley.

emilyn claid, The Trembling Forest, 2025. Future Ritual: CEREMONY. Photo by Fenia Kotsopoulou.



Credits
The Trembling Forest is choreographed and directed by emilyn claid and devised in collaboration with Azara, Eve Stainton, Martin O’Brien, Ming and Orrow Bell.

Design by Shanti Freed
Sound design by Lottie Poulet
Lighting design by Rachel Shipp 

Funders and Support
The Trembling Forest has been produced by Future Ritual, London and co- commissioned by Wysing Arts Centre and Future Ritual. The project is supported by Arts Council England and Knotenpunkt, with further support given by The Place, Rose Choreographic School and Queen Mary University of London.


The Trembling Forest is produced by Future Ritual. Enquiries: producing@futureritual.co.uk