Lakes of Anima: Light to Darkness

where the Sanctuary on the Fault Line movement began, on Hampstead heath in London, this film shares a dance that took place in the half hour that happens as darkness falls through us at twilight. Dancer Hayley J S Matthews is filmed by her husband Alistair H M Simmons, less a film and more a view of a quartet, between Hayley, Alistair, the falling light and the red oak glade just north of Parliament Hill. The choreography was formed by and through Hayley as she pulled the gestures of her experience of the first pandemic year into dance. Each time Hayley dances this solo she allows the woodland, the seasons, the weather, the light, the wild life, passers by and her neighbours who have come to watch many times to dance through her and her choreography, as well as her own history and experience. Hayley leans into the the dancer within her as her sanctuary in the uncertainty, this time without her neighbours, but in an intimate moment through the lens of her husband.