About Sanctuary on the Fault Line
Sanctuary on the Fault Line is a dance practice woven with land and community. A belief system. A radical feminist act. A seeking and establishment of ‘ground’ for the woven feminist dancing voice, which calls on fugitivity as a space where dancing happens and a different way for dance and the feminine to be in the world.
Developed and practiced by dancer Hayley J S Matthews. It re-embodies and re-creates womanhood, dance and land in our times as not owned or available, but wild, fertile, delicate, grace. Liberated into woven health with a powerful politic embodied ‘voice’. It weaves contemporary movement science with a deep subversive feminist feeling.
There have been different ways that this work has been transmitting to others so far, other dancers and public. Right now Hayley holds an Annual Gathering in the woods for pro women dancers interested in or practicing the work, called ‘Spells for the End of This World’. She performs in the wilds of North London, UK (and at times in Norfolk) on the 8 deep turns of the year in a gift economy. You can join the mailing list to be invited to these dances here. And this performance work, birthed through Sanctuary on the Fault Line’s wild, feminist, radical ways is beginning to find it’s way out into the wider wild world.
And for those who want to listen deeply into the philosophy and body of this work in their own little cave, there is also access to the key note talks below. Given by Hayley and brothers and sisters of this wayless way, who Hayley invited to help bring the many mycelial aspects of this work to mind, body and heart. You may be a dancer or connected to dance and so want to listen, or intrigued from somewhere else, either way, the talks are for you.
About the TALKS
Hopefully these talks will dig you deep, guide you, re-establish or fortify your own journey with the feminine and with dance. As we all meet pretty unsteady times, and look for ways to help birth new, kinder, embodied, more integrated, gently powerful ways to live on earth together, and to let break that which is not serving.
These talks were all born out of a particular moment in the life of the Sanctuary on the Fault Line practice, it is a living practice, threaded with feminist newness, which evolves. At times you will hear reference to the context the talk was given in, one of the three Sanctuary on the Fault Line laboratories that took place 2021 - 2023, these were '2021: Dancing a path through the Crises’, 2022 Rage is a Sane Reaction and 2023 The Dance of Being. And you’ll hear reference at times to the Sanctuary on the Fault Line movement or network, this is when there was a formal network, right now the network has no form, and yet, is surprisingly potent. They are are filmed recordings, accept for the intro talk, which is a written transmission of a talk Hayley gave at Sanctuary on the Fault Line event After the Flood, at Brighton Speigeltent in 2021.
As a whole body the talks form a space in and through which to feel deeply into the philosophy, the radical feminist act and the territory of this Sanctuary on the Fault Line work. If you have questions or long for connection with other women feeling into this work, we’re sure you’ll find this if you head to the woods and howl. And right now Hayley also holds an annual gathering for all pro women dancers who want to come, around Yule time in the woods, all women dancers are welcome.
The talks have three ‘waves’ to help you orient in them. The waves represent the three labs they occurred in, each was a gateway, a threshold, as the practice has been born into this world from silent being and through subterranea. And cared for, to the best of Hayley’s ability, in order to retain the power, delicacy and vulnerability of this work, so that it can meet you, in it’s wholeness. Perhaps these waves will be thresholds for you too.
The Talks
INTRO: Hayley J S Matthews: The vitalness of unleashing woman and dance, uninhibited into society
All other talks coming in waves! Wave 1 is here below. And you can find the titles of Wave 2 and 3 to wet your appetite too
/ WAVE 1 /
DANCING A PATH THROUGH THE CRISES
1: Marghit Thofner: Women and the woodland, in Mythology and History. 2021.
2: Hayley J S Matthews: The Anatomy of Grace and Freedom. A moving, feeling ‘talk’. 2021.
3: Bayo Akomolafe: Meeting in the Fragility of the Moment and the Fault Lines on which We Meet. 2021
4: Rachel Elderkin, Emma Zangs, Sandra Voulgari, Daisy Black, Hayley J S Matthews, Anastasia Kostner, Andrew Sanger: Hearing from the Dancers who Practiced this work while there was a formal network. 2021.
/ WAVE 2 /
RAGE IS A SANE REACTION
1: Jennifer Wade: The Wisdom of Feminine Rage, Seen through Women in History and Contemporary Theory. 2022.
2: Aaron Matthews: What could it best look like for dance to be ‘sustainable’? And the power of the arts as carrier of urgent messages. 2022.
3: Hayley J S Matthews: The Much Forgotten Role of WATCHING Dance; Part of the Tapestry of Human Health
/ WAVE 3 /
THE DANCE OF BEING
1: Bayo Akomolafe: What if We Welcomed The Dance of Possession?
2: Andrew Sanger: Liminality, Communities of Practice, and Alternative Futures
This is a re-recording of Andrew’s talk as the goddess of the glitch paid us a good visit at this moment in our third lab. He refers to some footage and images, which are currently lost, you can think of this talk therefore, as more than adequately full of cracks, the very substance of our enquiries.
3: John Stirk and Hayley J S Matthews: Being The Dance