Landing x The Wild Circle
Beautiful gatherings in the woods of Gloucestershire for women, through the seasons
Each a day of circling, campfire, embodiments, rest, expansion, digestion & witnessing wild dances that carry and hold us like new myths
With Women’s Circle Holder Emma Johnson & Dancer & Rolfer Hayley J S Matthews
photograph by Beth Hodgson
Upcoming Landing X The Wild Circles
each in a peaceful little woodland near Stroud
Saturday July 12: SUMMER ~ Trusting our Desires; Letting our Branches Grow, 12-6PM, £68
Saturday September 27: VERNAL EQUINOX ~ Repairing Light and Dark, 12-4PM, £48
(a saving of £16 if you’d like to book and come to both, £100)
photograph by Beth Hodsgon
More about Landing x The Wild Circle
Deep woodland days for women. Days that set dance, circling and womanhood in their fervent roles of connecting us to body, land, emotion and spirit, able to move us with and through that which we cannot move through alone.
A warming vegan soup lunch and abundant tea and snacks are included, round the fire and in your hammocks in the summer months.
photograph by Beth Hodgson
Hayley dancing at Imbolc, photograph by Frank Balbi Hansen
The rhythm of the days
The days start with time for each of us to attune and land in the woods. We move into circling round the fire with Emma. We are fire and lunch tended by Becky Kimberley, Community Artist and Forest School tender (see here on the left/above in red, in her element). There is time to chat, rest, journal and decompress.
photograph by Beth Hodsgon
We walk together to the next clearing to lay, sit and wander as we witness Hayley dancing, moving us within.
We drink tea and swing in hammocks. And return to the fire for embodiments with Hayley. Before closing together, setting off with our lanterns in the gloaming back to the other world, within our world.
The days bring us to meet all seasons, to be with the weather inside and out. We have cover and logs to sit on, we have hammocks. Come as you are, prepared for the weather, ready to become the compost, the wind, the fire, the dance.
About Hayley and Emma
Emma
Emma Johnson is a women's circle facilitator and space-holder, based in the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire. She says: "We talk a lot about ever-decreasing circles, and yet my experience of life since holding women's circles has been ever-increasing circles. Circle work is soul-nourishment, medicine, a way home and journey forward. I often say in my circles, that gathering in this way feels like a quiet revolution, the ripples of this work, in us and out into the world are never-ending and vital. " Emma forages from local woodland for her circle altars and seasonal displays, and her work is deeply connected with seasonal year and the pagan Wheel of the Year. Her spaces offer a ritual place to pause, slowdown, reflect and connect. More about Emma and her practice: https://www.thewildcircle.space/
Hayley
Hayley J S Matthews is a contemporary dancer, Rolfer, flutist, vocalist, movement teacher and feminist re-wilder. She was awarded the Thea Barnes Legacy Award in dance in 2020. And nominated for for ‘Women in Dance Awards’, UK, in 2021. She studies and embodies the work of dancer Isadora Duncan. And since 2020 she has been practicing and sharing an earth-wide dance movement, called Sanctuary on the Fault Line. Which invites women dancers to run to the wild, where dance can connect, flow and find us where we are, moving us all in the essential sub-visceral world we all feel so disconnected from.
Hayley’s own dances in this movement move with the seasons in the woods, form a regular community on Hampstead Heath, London and travel when they’re called. As well as birth ambient/folk/metal soundscapes with collaborators of her and her husband’s band Murmura. More about Hayley and her practice here.
photograph Beth Hodgson