£35

(includes meal and drinks)

Contemporary dancer Hayley J S Matthews brings her re-wilded, seasonal, feminist work Landings to An Sanctoir, West Cork.

Landings are events of Hayley’s dances, made in and for the wild, alongside shared meals, listening circles and campfires. They are moving through the UK and Ireland in 2024/25, and An Sanctoir will be their Irish home.

They are times of co-digesting our lives, of being moved, of coming together. They are invitations to come to the cracks, the fault lines, the places where we and our world hold tension, and there to re-discover the metabolisation and holding dancing, slowing down and connecting to the land and seasons offers. They are sanctuaries in our challenging times.

They are times to limbo our upper cultures, to meet in subterranean chambers. To re-belong to our land and in each others hearts. They are cauldrons of what next. Limbos of enclosure fences. They invite dancing into it’s deep feminist role of moving us through things we cannot move through alone.

They have a seasonal rhythm, with five dances that move through the year, and are invitations to come to the wild and meet the weather inside and out.

This dance on September 15 at An Sanctoir is called Lakes of Anima, made for when we begin to tip into the darker half of the year. It is a welcome to the dancing wilds, made for the liminal space of twilight. It’s a surrendering into the grief and suppression of the truly agent feminine and dancer in our world. And a waking of a feminine, dancing state that is integrated with wildness and the deep ecology of not being separate. With original music made by Hayley and her husband aka ‘Murmura’.

You can watch a trailer of a film made of Lakes of Anima, which was finalist in the Lift-Off Global Film Festival 2023, here, or rent the wh ole 30 minute film for £5.48.

The meal we’ll share together will be a hot pot, with bread, water and tea as you like. And they’ll be time to check-in to body, mind and emotion and spend time round the campfire together.

Looking forward to it :)

More About Hayley

Hayley J S Matthews is a multidisciplinaire; a contemporary dancer, Rolfer, flutist, vocalist, teacher, speaker and feminist re-wilder.

She makes territories of dance, moving image and ambient metal music as Murmura. She creates and dances solos, ensembles and movements under Ensemble Dans-Tank. And works as freelance dancer, collaborator and Rolfer.

Among others Hayley has danced, choreographed and taught with and for Isadora Duncan Repertoire Company (Paris), CoDa Dance (UK), English National Ballet, Sadlers Wells, East London Dance, Out There Festival (UK), Tanzfabrik (Germany), Norfolk and Norwich Festival, Dance Umbrella (UK) P.A.L/Stressfree (UK/France), National Theatre Ghana (Accra), The Cockpit (London), Brighton Fringe Festival (UK), Bayo Akomolafe’s ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. And over and over with the wilds.

The foundation of Hayley’s current practice, she calls ‘Sanctuary on the Fault Line’, in which she conceives, makes and shares dance outside of systemic normalities, deeply connected to the land and seasons she is from and the people and creatures who dwell there with her. She does this to experiment with deepening the voice of womanhood and dance in her time. To re-awaken dance and womanhood’s immense potential to sustain social and environmental health, change and to behave as poetic politic. She also leads a movement to hold and guide other women dancers in re-wilding, under the same name.

Hayley was born and bred in London, born under the bells of South Ealing and growing up in the dodgy end of Hanwell, connected by deep and wide Irish, Iceni and French-Canadian ancestral roots.

In 2020 Hayley was awarded the Thea Barnes Legacy Award, an award of female leadership in dance across the UK and US. And in 2021 was nominated for ‘Women in Dance Awards, UK.

Click here to see other Landing events

Landing ~ An Sanctoir