⬇︎
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 easily missed in our day to day lives.
Our vibrant and often subtle life force can drain away as we grow older, through sitting in school, 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. 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 never really disappeared, but sometimes gets buried.
There are no steps to learn, it's more natural than that.
Come and join us, and see if this is for you.
Sue Rickards
Learn more about Open Floor and 5Rhythms dance movement practices
What’s On Offer..
Saturday Live Pop-Up Classes
7.00 - 9.15pm - United Reformed Church
United Reformed Church, Pond Square N6 6BA Parking on the street
Not Weekly: Saturdays: Oct 5, 12, 19. Nov 2, 9, 16, 23. Dec 21 2024
Drop In - Pay On Door: £20 Entrance, £16 Concession, £12 Unwaged
15 Minutes walk from 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
Phoenix Dance
7.30 - 9.15pm - St Mary’s Primrose Hill, 2 Elsworthy Rd, NW3
Weekly on Tuesdays
Drop In And Pay On Door
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)
Tuesday & Saturday Classes On Zoom
7.00 - 8.30pm - Weekly
TUESDAY CLASS held by Richard Jerram
TUESDAY ZOOM LINK: https://zoom.us/j/970060735 payment link shared in class
SATURDAY CLASS held by Sue or Richard
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
PAYPAL: https://www.paypal.me/SueRickards
BANK TRANSFER: Ms S A Rickards, SC: 07-04-36, ACC: 43788875
EUROSWISE: BAN BE67 9671 0835 1487, Bank code (SWIFT / BIC) TRWIBEB1XXX, TransferWise Europe SA, Avenue Marnix 13-17, Brussels 1000 Belgium
We respect our losses and those who have died.
You are very welcome to come, even if you haven't experienced great loss yet. You will one day, and this evening will help to support you when the inevitable comes. You are welcome - whatever ways grief has touched you - a lot or a little, in wild waves or in gentles streams of feeling. You are welcome if you feel numb.
It's a wonderful healthy life affirming night.
Lost Souls
This is our annual night to dance together and honour the griefs and sorrows of our lives and the universality of loss.
When: SATURDAY 2 NOV 2024
Time: 7.00 - 9.15pm (Please come on time if you can)
Where: United Reformed Church, Pond Square, N6 6BJ
Cost: Pay on the door. £20/16/12
It's rich and connected and real evening; including our sadnesses but not defined by sadness.
We dance and through that allow anything that needs to be moved to move and anything that needs to be held, to be honoured.
Bring photos of your people who have died, if you'd like to.
It's a simple, heart opening way to share our connection.
“My grief says that I dared to love, that I allowed another to enter the very core of my being and find a home in my heart. Grief is akin to praise; it is how the soul recounts the depth to which someone has touched our lives.”
― Francis Weller
An on-going closed dance group with Sue Rickards. Assisted by Angela Griffiths - in person & online
Each Term: 1 x Weekend SAT 11.00am - 6.00pm SUN 10.30am - 5.00pm + 5 x Thursday Evenings 7.00pm - 10.00pm
251 Hungerford Rd, London N7 9LD, UK
The next term starts with a weekend on 5/6 Oct 2024. 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 is an ongoing group intended to accompany us through our lives. We dance, we use words and other means of expression to explore our relationship with ourselves, with each other and in community, using movement as our bedrock. It is a closed group. New comers are welcome and invited only at the beginning of each term. We're a movement based community of dancers who practice dancing and exploring deeply, playfully, and seriously, expanding our ability to be spontaneous, honest, responsible and real.
To join or find out more information email Virginia: info@acalltodance.com
This Life-affirming dancing weekend will explore the many ways we can meet and live more freely with loss and love.
Teacher: Sue Rickards, assisted by Frie Lavelli
When: 26 - 27 October, 2024
Time: 11.00-18.00 / 11.00-17.00
Where: Atheneum Deurne, Jan Brochovenstraat 15, 2100 Deurne
Belgium
Cost: € 180
Info & Booking: https://www.owc.be/course/3562/all-that-we-love-we-will-lose
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
Don’t expect this to be a miserable weekend. We will have a vibrant, often pleasurable time together, weaving our sorrows and our loves, so that we can claim much more aliveness.
Through dancing and simple enquiry we’ll grow and support our capacity to fully live the rich soulful tapestry of love that life offers.
It can be hard to be alive to anything in a body that is asleep, so we will gently wake our bodies, and dance our hearts awake too. Our imaginations will step up and our intuition will deepen.
VILLAGE 2024
A year-long, monthly online moving village gathering to include losses as part of our vibrant living.
When: Mondays monthly online: 5-6.30pm;
22 April, 20 May, 24 June, 22 July, 19 Aug, 23 Sept, 21 Oct, 25 Nov, 16 Dec, 13 Jan, 17 Feb, 17 March
Where: online (zoom code sent near the start date once registered)
Time: 5-6.30pm (UK time)
Cost: £140 (€165) for the year
£100 (€117) early bird until 19th March
There are 2 places available at £40(€47) for people for whom the cost would otherwise be prohibitive
Info & Booking: susanrickards@blueyonder.co.uk
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 of grief, rather than being alive to it. The difference, 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 - 1.5 hours a month, 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.
I have been training 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.
Already Alright
An annual retreat and gathering in Orval, Belgium
Room Spaces are becoming limited but there is still plenty of camping space :)
5 Days: 2025 (dates TBC)
Already Alright is an annual summer retreat and gathering. The week is both unique for each 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.
Booking & Info: luc@owc.be www.owc.be
Annual Rituals & Celebrations
Annual Rituals & Celebrations
Annual Rituals & Celebrations
Lost Souls, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve Oct - Dec 2024
A chance to dance together however we feel
