Landings - Seasonal Circle & Dance Retreats
Magical, seasonal, and deeply grounding retreats in the woods - with a women’s circle, meditation, a wild dance performance, embodiment practices, seasonal rituals and nourishing food shared around the campfire.
Next date: 22 March, 12-6pm
Landings x The Wild Circle brings together my work in circle and my connection to this ancient land, with the extraordinarily powerful work of dancer Hayley J S Matthews, who will bring a series of dances to this beautiful woodland space over the course of the coming year.
This richly-curated retreat in nature offers a chance to return to the trees, finding yourself in beautiful, ancient woodland for ritual, reflection and connection. Join us around the fire to root, ground and land in a wild, seasonal space.
We’ll begin with an opening circle with Emma as we land in the woods, with hot tea around the fire
Following our circle, there is space to journal, to rest in hammocks strung between the trees, and share hot soup together
We will then walk deeper into the woods to experience the magical, wildness of Hayley and her beautiful dance between the trees…
Before returning to the woodland hearth, to warm bodies and minds around the fire, with a space for reflection and some gentle emodiment practices.
We finish with a closing circle and final reflections, before walking out of the woods together…
All drinks and snacks are included. Please indicate on the booking form if you have a specific dietary requirement.
Please note: this is an intentionally ‘wild’ event, performed in nature, in whatever weather Mother Nature sends our way. The dance itself lasts around 30 minutes and will be performed entirely outside - we will gather amongst the trees and the only cover provided will be from the canopy of leaves above us - so you will be invited to be responsible for wearing appropriate clothing, footwear and whatever you need to keep you warm and dry. In the case of very high winds or torrential rain, we may have to cancel, and you will be refunded; but otherwise this is an invitation to be truly in the elements, however they appear for us that day.
Two supported places are available at whatever you can pay - please email emma@thewildcircle.space. Thank you.
ANY QUESTIONS…?
You mention dancing….do I have to dance? No! Not unless you want to! The dancing is all from dancer Hayley J Matthews - you are simply bearing witness to this beautiful movement performance between the trees. Though space is made for you to move if you wish to and embody your experience of the day however feels good.
How will I get to the woods and where will I park? The woodland is just off a main road between Cirencester and Stroud, down a well-maintained track, with plenty of parking at the end. We will be in the parking space to greet you and walk you the three or four minutes into the woodland from there.
Are there amenities - hot drinks, toilets? Yes, we will be serving plenty of hot tea and coffee, and hot soup warmed over the fire, and there is a compost loo close to the camp.
What about bad weather? We have a beautiful covered area around our central fire where we can be dry if it rains, and the fire will be kept going throughout to warm us. That said, this is a wild circle - so expect to connect with the elements.
Will I have to share or talk in front of people? Not if you don’t feel called to in the moment. There’s something really special about sitting together in silence, and it’s especially magical when you’re being seranded by the wind and the birds! So see this as an invitation to be in a beautiful woodland space, soaking up the beautiful environment around you, however you need to be there.
Landings are a journey of wild dances, a chance to re-wild and re-root in the land, to be moved and to come into stillness. They are invitations to come to the cracks, the fault lines, the places where we and our world hold tension, and there rediscover the metabolisation and holding that dancing, slowing down and connecting to the land and season offers. They are sanctuaries in our challenging times.
The dance series has a seasonal rhythm, gathered around the pagan sabbats. They’re an invitation to meet our cyclical female bodies in the circling of the year – to experience how we root into the land, into change and the weather, inside and out. They offer a chance for a deep connection with ourselves, and with each other, with a sisterhood of sacred feminine power, of the simple, ancient magic of gathering in the wild woods together.
Our series of dances will run late March to coincide with Ostara and the Spring Equinox; then in mid-July, as a bridge between the summer solstice and the warmth of Lammas; and then in late September, close to the Autumn Equinox.
“They are times to re-belong to our land and in each other’s hearts. They are cauldrons of what next. Space to metabolise our grief, rage and anxieties into possibilities, into movement, into relief, into joy. I feel we’re so in need of coming to our stucknesses, and moving from here, being moved. Emotionally, creatively, spiritually. These Landing events, through a kind of feminine wildness, stretch time and give us space to digest, land, heal, see differently, get un-stuck from our separateness. That’s what I was moved to make for us.” (Hayley J S Matthews)
The Dances
Migration, as spring springs. This dance moves through a glade, spring calls us to MOVE, to change, to grow, to migrate, but from our roots and not in straight lines, and this dance does that. It calls us to our knees, to laughter, to stretching time and space way beyond the glade we’re in with elastic limbs. To our heart beats, and to the trees.
Origin-ate, at high summer. This starts slow, appearing at the base of big trees. It scuttles like fighting ants and slowly makes it’s way into a wild jig and leaps and lifts of joy. This is a dance of sprialling and finding the light.
Burial of the Witches, we meet the balance point of vernal equinox, and the harvest is in. This is the time for deepening into ancestry, to the women who came before us, to the witches, the wounds we carry, and how theyh show up for us now. We still hold a tension around these losses, and around the associated cultural realities of the witch trials. These holdings and freezes pass down genetically, neurologically and posturally.This dance acknowledges the burden of the trials in our bodies and in our culture, which still exist, and offer a space to mourn and bury those women who still remain withus, killed so violently, who were never ‘witches’. So this dance mourns, buries, celebrates and sets free.