Hayley J S Matthews

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Hayley J S Matthews

Dancer, Rolfer, Musician. Instigator of the Sanctuary on the Fault Line movement Co-Artist of Murmura

24/09/2025

My ‘Sanctuary Works’ dances moving through the UK this autumn:

27/09 Gloucestershire - ‘Landing x The Wild Circle’ with .
Booking in my bio

30/10 London (wilds) - ‘Burial’ dancing with what’s shaping up to be a sensitive, wise group of gifted women.
Email to join the group or witness in a gift economy hayley@ensembledance.org

02/11 Tiverton, Devon, ‘Burial’ at with a lantern ceremony
Booking open very soon. Write to be sent booking when it opens hayley@ensembledance.org

21/12 London (wilds )- ‘New Light’, back to soloing. Wrote to be on my mailing list for my Sanctuary Works at home in my own community ✨

📸 the talented

22/09/2025

If you’d like to slip in this Saturday in Gloucestershire, we have a few spaces free. To lick the wounds the ‘witch’ persecutions have left us with; personally, socially, culturally. And to call back, within and without, the goodness and immensity that was suppressed and persecuted at that time.

Hayley will be dancing and sharing some of her choreography and sound-score ‘Burial’. And offering embodiments and music. And Emma will be holding Circle, with readings and contemplations and time to listen, speak and share together. We’ll share lunch, rest and fireside and be with repairing, landing, weaving, dancing, voicing, becoming.

Booking and and info in our bios ‘Landing x The Wild Circle’

18/09/2025

‘Balancing Light and Dark’ join Emma Johnson and I for this equinox ‘Landing x The Wild Circle’. In this women only day.

We’ll be working with deep, supported exhalation from Rolfing wisdom. Full aerobic lift from dance and contemporary movement science. Emma’s gifts of circle holding. Witnessing dance and dancing ourselves in the woods. A harmony at this time that the year is finding balance.

September 27, Gloucestershire

Link in my bio and in Emma’s

18/08/2025

“An invitation to come dance with me in the woods; to practiced and unpracticed, confessed and unconfessed dancers. And to witnesses too, those curious and wanting to be part. We’ll move with this simple dance October 29-30 this year, we’ll howl together for witnesses to join us on the eve of October 30, as the dark falls. Come.

This dance connects to the witch wound in our history, in our bodies and social and cultural realities. As a dance it is an intervention, which offers a burial to the women who were persecuted and never buried, calling their goodness back among us, and celebrating and becoming it. It is deep and simple. As I made it there was much shaking and many tears. We’ll laugh and cry together I’m sure. It’s dancing in its ‘weaving something in (w)hole’ quality, in its alchemical change making quality.

It’s the second part of Sanctuary on the Fault Line’s ‘Dancing Lost Gestures’ 9 month cycle, which starts this September; info in the bio.

To join ‘Burial of the (Witches) Women’ email me at hayley@ensembledance.org. Those who have, I should have acknowledged already and I’ll write with more info early September. There is no payment to join for dancers. We’ll each holler to our networks about the dance. Witnesses are invited to make a contribution and this is shared equally by all dancers. A sharing of the gift economy I’m growing in the wild.

See you at Samhain for this sanctuary making

Hayley”

14/08/2025

Some words from research for ‘The Wilding’, coming as I listen to the land in the silence of a bronze age stone circle high in The Beacons. Re-membering that before our written myths the main divine reality was a female form, synonymous with the land:

‘Listen to the dark this night
As she enfolds you in her velvety touch
Her cavernous belly
Fear present with no meaning in her expanded mind
Bring your lanterns
And she’ll bring stars
Storms, brutal to some, are her learning; clarifying cold and wondrous
Out on the moors of unknowing

Come see ‘The Wilding’ in Norfolk, UK at . September 5/6. With me and . Tickets and info in my bio

08/08/2025

I’ve curated these three works together to take us on a journey. From something that is too much to bear; through the chaos, beauty and calling in of integration; to a deepened, more spacious, slower, wilder, buoyant living.

Two are by Isadora Duncan, from a time in her life when she was moving with something too much to bear herself, and in her astounding way, danced her way through. And one by , which dives intimately to the sides of our ancestresses who were murdered as ‘witches’, and calls their goodness, cut out at that time, back among us.

I sense all around me that we are all living through a time that’s too much to bear. So here we together. I didn’t make this to recover us, it’s what has been pouring out, from my dance and sound making practice, connected to the land, my body and belonging.

Deep Light
Performance - 19:00 September 13, 2025, , London. Plus a light supper.
Workshop - 10 - 15:00 September 14, 2025, , London
Tickets in my bio

I’m joined in bringing this when to you by dancers and . By Isadora Duncan teacher and by musicians , and . With researching alongside

22/07/2025

Are you coming to Harlequin Fayre this year East Angles? It’s one of the highlights of our year; peak of midsummer, a weekend that feels like you’re living in a bless-ed-bunting filled village. This year Al and I will be trying out how our sound-dance score ‘Imbolc’ meets a festival tent. Come find us at the Scrap Raqueteerrs Stage. The schedule will be on the boards at the tent.

You can watch a film of ‘Imbolc’ on our page, link in our Murmura bio.

15/07/2025

The flute for me occupies a deep space in the world. I pick up my flute when I want to hide, or feel mystery. It’s like the moment the turtle goes into her shell. And sounds from there. Somehow closed but sounding nonetheless, with the world around her🪈. It’s gives a whole different vibe to the bad rep our ‘dorsal vagal’ nervous system gets when it ‘shuts us down’.

I’ll be on my flute this September for the sharing of our new sound score ‘Burial’. With on guitar and percussion, on base, percussion and vocals, on harmonium, fiddle and vocals and me on flute, vocals and dancing. For ‘Deep Light’, in London at . September 13.

Head to ‘events’ to book.

Alongside our ‘Burial’ soundscore will be two of Isadora Duncan’s dances performed by , , Betsy Field and me. Directed by . It’s an interesting dance moving from flute to vocals to dancing. Like moving between nervous system states.

Hayley x

13/07/2025

I’m really excited to be coming back together to perform with again for ‘The Wilding’. A dance, music, aerial and poetry happening in the wilds. This September at , Norfolk.
Booking opens soooooon.

This pic of us almost ten years ago by . Now both ever the wilder.

🦁

11/07/2025

Preparation has been deep and rich so far, bringing clearly into feeling that when gestures that have been lost begin to return- in our work here - of the land, body, feminine, chaos begins. Terrifying for some, and truly wonderful, it shakes things up and re-arranges our foundations for new possibilities.

Excitement is rising.

DEEP LIGHT- September 13/14 September 2025, Live, London

A performance and workshop that unearths the gesture of ‘deep light’; a gesture that comes in as we allow ourselves to the fault lines of deep hurt, and give this time to digest in dance and song. We’ll be moving with Isadora Duncan’s dances ‘Marche Funebre and Ave Maria; with live music and dance score ‘Burial’ by , which brings a resolving moment for our ancestors who were persecuted as ‘witches’ and the wounds we still bear from these times. And with embodiments and Celtic Wisdom from the peat bog.

With dancers , and Betsy Field
Musicians , ,
Isadora Duncan dances directed by .
Visioned, danced and sung by as part of the programme ‘Dancing Lost Gestures’

Booking ‘events’

15/04/2025

dance is the new myth

📷

09/04/2025

I’ve been contemplating ‘innovation’ and how it is that so many Rolfers create new ways of working in Rolfing and in other movement modalities, sciences, philosophies and artistic endeavours they are connected to. And often our clients too, during a Rolfing process, create things they haven’t before, new ways of working, seeing, being, organising our world. I sense this is because, humans are so grown by the world, unlike any other animal, we come into standing, walking and moving way after birth. So in so many ways we are stood, moved behaved by the world around us. This means that we are patterned by what is already here, how our social and cultural realities have come to move us.
And to come back to our own structure, there are different, innate ways of seeing, moving and being that we may not have explored. And as we land here, we see differently, organise our internal world differently, and then see and feel how we can organise our external world differently too. We arrive on our very individual offering to the world, it clarifies and moves, creating our world differently.

📸 , in shot too is the wonderful

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Website

http://www.ensembledance.org/

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