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First of all I'd like you to know that you are welcome.
The reason we are calling you is not just to dance. It's because of all that dancing brings.
It's to reclaim the qualities of life that are so precious, vital and that can be easily missed in our day to day lives.
Our vibrant and often subtle life force can drain away as we grow older; through sitting at desks, in cars, sitting in our armchairs. Or through being shown what to think, what to feel, who to be, by people around us and constant advertising and social media. So while we don't have to throw ourselves around like wild banshies (although that is welcome too), we move - and in doing so we begin to reclaim more and more of our own life-force, which has never really disappeared, but sometimes gets buried.
There are no steps to learn, it's more natural than that.
Come and join us, no expeience needed at all - and see if this is for you.
Sue Rickards
Learn more about Open Floor and 5Rhythms dance movement practices
What’s On Offer..
DISCOVERY
Online, Autumn 2025
We dance…..
We explore…..
And we don't try to fix anything - we see what comes up to be acknowledged, included, celebrated, teased apart, discovered....we won't know what until the moment arises. This enriches us and gives us new perspectives.
We're curious together. We see what happens when we bring loving attention and presence to whatever comes up. Which is often surprising, freeing and fresh - and sometimes gently challenging.
I can't really describe it, but if you want to come and find yourself newly and compassionately surprised, by yourself and each other, this could be for you.
These groups are deepening and getting simpler at the same time. Some people return regularly and in each series new people jump on board. Our confidence and trust grows. We become more curious, more playful, more surprised. At least, I do! - and I don't think I'm alone in that.
Online
Mondays 6 - 8pm
Dates: Oct 13, 20, 27. Nov 10, 17, 24
Cost: Basic cost £160
Pretty skint - £110
Totally skint - £40 (limited number)
To book:
please pay and then email to let me know that you have
suerickards888@gmail.com
Paypal
or bank transfer Ms S A Rickards SC: 07-04-36 ACC: 43788875,
or in Euros (€180/132 ) WISE:
IBAN BE67 9671 0835 1487
Bank code (SWIFT / BIC) TRWIBEB1XXX
TransferWise Europe SA
Avenue Marnix 13-17
Brussels 1000 Belgium
I'm ongoingly inspired by, and so grateful for working with Fanny Behrens and her late partner Colin Harrison, and Joanna Watters. I hope that what I have received from them - the love, the care, the challenges - can in turn find its way through me, to you.
You can find their work here www.beingmoved.com and https://www.thisbeautifulwork.com
From previous participants:
I AM LOVING IT!!
It feels like this gorgeous space in my week, where the 2 hours stretch out into this beautiful place where I can drop back into my body and be reminded of my true self, where I can put down my "to do" list and focus wholly on me, where I feel deeply held and seen by you.
I am really enjoying the other guys in the group too, and going into break out rooms with them and getting to know them a bit, and have them witness me.
And the work you do with individuals, as things arise within us, moves me deeply. I have learnt a lot from observing how you work with people, and how they respond to this work and to you.
I am reminded about accepting all those parts of me, and to give myself time and compassion and kindness, like I would do with my children and my clients.
What I am taking home from it is reminding myself that I am here, all of me.
Witnessing other people talk and share and move, and how you work with that, gives me more permission to be fully myself.
Already Alright
An annual retreat and gathering in Orval, Belgium with Sue
Accompanied by: Frie Lavelli & Kath Jones
Room spaces and camping available
5 Days: Sun 27 Jul - Fri 1 Aug 2025
Booking & Info: luc@owc.be https://www.owc.be/program/already-alright#info
Already Alright is an annual summer retreat and gathering.
The week is both unique for each one of us and also deeply supported by our coming together. We dance and create space to be curious, excited and surprised by what is actually ready to emerge and be included. We don't need to know in advance what we need or what might happen.
This simple yet radical practice of exploring and being curious can change everything.
Connected to ourselves and to each other, we find ourselves much less interested in thinking there is something wrong with us, or anyone else. We can stop fighting with the underlying fear that we are not truly ok and therefore we can relax and become available to delight and spaciousness. Freedom and freshness come through us, sometimes when we least expect it.
Each year we build our confidence in what's ready to emerge. Fresh each year, and as a result of all our years of dancing together, this Annual Retreat and Gathering helps us to keep remembering the value of our unique contributions and our Alrightness. Oldtimers are as welcome as ever - we welcome each other! And newcomers are always very welcome too.
VILLAGE
Autumn 2025
A six month, monthly online moving village gathering to include our losses as part of our vibrant living.
Holding ourselves, together
We need to be able to hold ourselves when grief and sorrow wash through our lives. We also need a village, to acknowledge our grief and loss, the big and the small, so that it can colour, but not define our lives.
For most of us this place and 'process' has been lost or ignored so that we are left in the cold or emptiness of grief, rather than being alive to it. The difference, and the cost, is our vitality. Which is a waste of our life while we have it.
As Elizabeth says in The Last Devil to Die "I'm grieving, not dead".
So this group - 1 ¾ hours a month, through the Winter, is a village for our aliveness whilst acknowledging loss. Holding ourselves, together, as we include what's true; that sorrow is a healthy response in our vibrant life. It's not what we carry, but how. We'll dance, of course. We'll laugh, maybe cry, we'll be delighted, we'll be together and that's healthy.
When: Mondays monthly online
Mondays 6 - 7.45pm (UK);
6th Oct, Nov 3rd, Dec 1st, Jan 12th, Feb 9th, Mar 9th.
Cost:
£150
£100 earlybird until 31st May
£40 (4 places available for people for whom the cost would otherwise be prohibitive)
To book your place:
I have trained as a grief-tender with Frances Weller, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow, who names a few gates of the grief that we all live with, and that are often unacknowledged. This work will gently inform our times together.
Surprised By A Poem
In the same way that learning to make an omelette doesn't make us a chef, or making a clay pot doesn't make us a ceramicist, writing a poem doesn't make us a poet.
However, we might turn out to love making omelettes or pots or writing a poem or two. If you would like the latter to be true, whatever your experience or absence thereof, this might be for you. Over these 5 weeks we'll come together to work and play with letting poems appear. We'll read and write poems, whether we think we can or not, we'll move to some fab music and see what happens. Together we'll hear and write the unexpected.
Rachel is a poet and always will be, she loves poetry and wants to work with it.
Sue is not a poet, and doesn’t want to be, yet she loves poetry and wants to play with it.
Online
Wednesdays, Oct 29th, Nov 5, 12, 19, 26
6 - 8.30pm UK time
£180 earlybird price before 31st July
£250 generous, supportive
£220 regular
£200 lower cost
£40 2 places for those for whom the cost would otherwise be prohibitive
To book, please contact Bronia onemomentintimetheatre@gmail.com
AND THE BEAT GOES ON
An ongoing closed dance group with Sue Rickards & Angela Griffiths
And The Beat Goes On is an extraordinary group full of unique, connecting and ordinary people. We dance, explore, find ourselves playful, and learn together. We build our own community, over and over, changing, adapting, alive and real; with all our human kindness, strangeness and quirks, with all our silliness and seriousness. We learn to include ourselves and each other and grow as individuals at the same time. We become more spontaneous and honest, more real and more responsible - and we have plenty of fun as we go.
Next Term: (Pse note new format of days and evenings)
Weekend
Saturday Oct 11th, 11.00am - 5.30pm
Sunday Oct 12th 10.30am - 5.00pm
3 Thursday Evenings 23rd Oct, 6th Nov, 20th Dec
7.00pm - 10.00pm
Saturday, 6th Dec, 11am - 5.30pm
251 Hungerford Rd, London N7 9LD, UK
Each term starts with a weekend (next intake 11/12 Oct 2025). The minimum commitment is 2 terms to allow time for new participants to arrive and to have a sense of continuity for the group.
And The Beat Goes On has been running for 22 years.
It is a closed group and newcomers are only invited
at the beginning of each term.
To join or find out more; info@acalltodance.com
Phoenix Dance
7.30 - 9.15pm - St Mary’s Primrose Hill, 2 Elsworthy Rd, NW3
Weekly on Tuesdays
Drop In And Pay On Door
Held by a collective of teachers: Audrey, Mira, Dean, Killian & Sue
Cost: Supporter Ticket £40 (one month of dancing at a discounted rate of £10 per week);
Generosity Rate £20 (makes it possible to offer sponsored rates to those that have less);
Fair Price £15 (what we need to make a living);
Sponsored Rate £5 (struggling financially but need to dance)
A residential winter closed group
with Sue, Hilary, Becca, Rachel & Killian
A winter gathering over 4 residential days at the very special Earth Spirit Centre in Somerset.
Come congregate and dance in the dark depths of winter and feed your imagination around the hearth.
This is a call to the untamed in us which can’t be satisfied by the artificial light of devices or tv.
This is a call to that in us which wants the heat of real fire, real company and real aliveness.
We gather outside by a blazing FIRE as it speaks to us and we listen deeply to our own nature.
We remember our natural kinship and make friends.
We dance and become enchanted by stories.
However each moment takes us, we dance, invoking mystery to choreograph our time together.
We pray for ourselves, for others and for all of life as we are held by the power of fire within the Sweat Lodge Ceremony.
11-15 Feb 2026
booking now open
Contact Becca for information and to book:
2026fire@gmail.com
Come congregate; dance, be quiet, be still, be wild
photo: Jill Haviland
LOST SOULS
This is our annual night to dance together and honour the griefs and sorrows of our lives and the universality of loss. It's a rich, connecting and real evening; including our sadnesses but not defined by sadness. We dance - and through we can that allow anything that needs to be moved to move,to honour anything that needs to be held. We respect our losses and those who have died.
You are welcome - whatever ways grief has touched you - a lot or a little, in wild waves or in gentle streams of feeling. You are welcome if you feel numb or if you are simply wanting to dance. You are very welcome to come, even if you haven't experienced great loss yet. You will. one day, and this evening dancing in community might support you when that time comes.
It's a wonderful healthy life-affirming night.
Bring photos of your people who have died, if you'd like to.
It's a simple, heart opening way to share our connection.
Sat 25th Oct, 7-9.15pm. Please come on time if you can.
United Reformed Church, Pond Square, N6 6BJ
Pay on the door. £20/16/12
There is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness, some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive. Through this, I have come to have a lasting faith in grief.”
― Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow
Tuesday & Saturday Classes On Zoom
Mostly held by Richard Jerram, with Sue as an occasional guest teacher
7.00 - 8.30pm - Weekly
TUESDAY ZOOM LINK: https://zoom.us/j/970060735
SATURDAY ZOOM LINK: https://zoom.us/j/374997307
Please pay £10, or if you need to pay less in order for this to be accessible, pay what you can.
Links for payment will be given on the night. (Please remind Richard - he sometimes forgets to give them :-). )
Saturday Classes
Sue is taking a break from Saturday classes until October. Meanwhile Dean is holding a Saturday class in the same church.
Contact Dean 07951 530076
7.00 - 9pm
United Reformed Church, Pond Square N6 6BA
Parking on the street
Drop In - Pay On Door: £20 Entrance, £16 Concession, £12 Unwaged
Highgate or Archway tube
Drop in dance; all welcome, however and whoever you are. No experience needed. These evenings are about allowing ourselves to be alive and real, however we feel. Come and give it a go
Click to join whatsapp for a reminder on the week when the dance is happening
Clearing
Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognise and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worthy of rescue.
Martha Postlethwaite
A Message From Sue About Saturday Classes
For some time now I have been feeling the need to listen to a voice that's calling for some space to be heard. And yet, I love this work and don't want to retire. Far from it.
I spent a lot of time pondering, thinking, wondering, wrangling, and getting nowhere. Then suddenly, on retreat, whilst I wasn't thinking about it, I realised I must make space for a chunk of time each year. To pause in the doing, however rich the doing is.
So, I'm not going to hold Saturday classes though the lighter months. All other groups will continue. I will offer Saturday classes again from October though to March, inclusive.
Of course, my fear is that no-one will want to come back.
My hope is that you will.
Annual Rituals & Celebrations
Annual Rituals & Celebrations
Annual Rituals & Celebrations
Lost Souls (25 Oct 2025), Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve
A chance to dance together however we feel
