A seasonal series of dance performances in the wild with silent walks,
campfires, feasts & organic treats
with artists Hayley J S Matthews & Tim Sanderson
October 2024 - September 2025
At Poets Acre, Swanton Novers, North Norfolk
Come to all or one, we’ll conjure a deep, metabolising ecology
photo: Hayley J S Matthews by Frank Balbi Hansen
Autumn: October 12 2024, 14:30 - 19:30. £40 (including flowing wild tea & apple tart)
Winter - Saturday 1st February 2025, £55 (including drinks & a winter feast by the fire)
Spring - Saturday 26th April 2025, £40 (including flowing wild tea and organic treats)
Summer - Saturday 28th June 2025, £55 (including drinks & a summer feast)
Autumn - Saturday 20th September 2025, £40 (including flowing wild tea and organic treats)
Landings are evening journeys that connect us to the land, the season, our body, dancing, listening and shared time in the wild. Join us at Poet’s Acre, surrounded by 1000 acres of organic farmland and ancient woodland, nestled next to Swanton Novers Nature Reserve, North Norfolk.
We will take you on an embodied journey of connection with the land, your self and others. We’ll gather for a welcome, take a silent nature walk together through the ancient woods, witness Hayley's live dance performance, share tea, nibbles or feasts, depending on the season (see notes on dates above), and meet each other in a listening circle round the campfire. All food is made from locally grown and foraged produce.
Landings provide time to slow down, connect to body and earth, digest our lived experiences and allow our emotional lives to flow. It is a re-discovery of the holding and metabolisation that dance, nature and the seasons can provide. Time to re-belong to nature and our own nature, reorient and find ground and sky, which is always the beginning of what is next.
Autumn Landing 2024 - October 12
The dance you will experience on October 12 is Lakes of Anima, a solo by Hayley made for the liminal space of the autumn twilight; to hold us as we tip into the dark half of the year. What will we let go of? What will we receive? Could we begin to land at the beginning of our seasonal series, in a state that is integrated with wildness and the deep ecology of not being separate. The dance is half an hour, we’ll witness it together in the woods, sitting or standing, shifting or moving. Children are welcome, and are free to move and make noise during the dance as they wish.
The listening circle will be a powerful and simple format that allows us to come together, hear each others truth and really be heard. Sharing whatever wants to be spoken from the heart, as much or as little as is needed. The emphasis is on active listening to hear deeply what others have to say. It allows us to remember the profound beauty of our humanity and the common ground we share.
On October 12 we’ll have homemade apple tart, made from Poets Acre apples. And a selection of natural teas, foraged from Poets Acre wilds round the fire, on return from our walk and dance, and ahead of our campfire listening circle.
About Tim and Hayley
Landing at Poets Acre is lead by Tim Sanderson and Hayley J S Matthews.
Tim’s life-time experiment is to exist symbiotically and harmoniously with the land, collaborating in a continuous creative act of living, with the place, the plants and animals and the passing seasons and years. He is an artist, craftsman, grower, woodsman, father of two girls, and founder of Poet’s Acre. He has been living and tending at Poets Acre for 20 years.
Hayley is a contemporary dancer, Rolfer, musician and one half of Murmura, who make territories of image, dance and ambient music. She is founder of the Sanctuary on the Fault Line movement, an earth-wide movement which weaves dance with the land and the deep feminine. She is recipient of the Thea Barnes Dance Award, 2019, for women leaders in dance in the UK and US and was nominated for Women in Dance Awards 2021. She has danced and taught for CoDa Dance (UK), Elizabeth Schwartz Isadora Duncan Repertoire Company (Paris), Cando2, Sadlers Wells, East London Dance, Out There Festival (UK), Tanzfabrik (Germany), English National Ballet, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, Dance Umbrella (UK) P.A.L/Stressfree (UK/France), Norwich Arts Centre (UK), National Theatre Ghana (Accra), The Cockpit, Brighton Fringe Festival, The People’s Forest – Waltham Forest Borough of Culture, Bayo Akomolafe’s ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. And over and over with the wilds as part of her own Sanctuary on the Fault Line practice.
Sanctuary on the Fault Line https://www.ensembledance.org/sanctuariesonthefaultlines. Hayley’s Rolfing info + inquiries www.rolfingwithhayley.org. Hayley’s Dance work www.ensembledance.org. Flute, Dance + Vocals with Murmura https://www.ensembledance.org/murmura
Tim Sanderson https://www.poetsacre.com and https://timothyjohnsanderson.net
More Landings
Landing is a series of five seasonal events of dances, walks, meals, ceremonies and circles taking place across the UK and Ireland. Tim Sanderson is their collaborator in Norfolk. Details of the next four at Poets Acre, Norfolk will be here on this page when booking opens. If you’d like to hear about them write to us here or sign up to the Poet's Acre mailing list here https://www.poetsacre.com
Landing takes place outdoors, so please dress for the seasonal weather and your comfort. We’ll reschedule the event in the case of very strong winds or sustained torrential rain!
Snacks, meals and hot drinks provided at Poets Acre will all be made from chemical free ingredients grown as locally as possible or foraged from the land. Everything on offer will be suitable for vegans and vegetarians, please advise us if you have dietary requirements or allergies in advance.
