Lyn invited me to a week on Orkney at Lammas 1998, to help out with a British Mysteries course she was running. There were six of us altogether, mainly strangers to each other, driving up from London in a rickety van. On the way we stopped off at stone circles and Lyn began to show us how to work. We lay in the grass trying to soak up the feeling of the places and we got used to working together. She gave us each a role from the myth of Arianrhod so that together we could begin to develop a body of experience, and then she gave us exercises to get to know each other and the roles we had taken on.

When we arrived at our destination in Orkney, we had to clear out a hall we were going to use for movement work. Among the stack of chairs we came across a note written on a scrap of paper “Can you spin gold from straw?” which we took as a kind of motto for the week.

The work was sometimes practical and sometimes very subtle. We were trying to explore a world at the threshold of perception. One time, our group was walking on a road by the sea, and we stopped to watch the light playing on the water (both symbols of the house of Arianrhod). At that moment we looked down and discovered an object lying in the road at our feet which turned out to be of great significance to the house. 

Lyn also had an ability to generate energy, working with us in a kind of feedback loop to make connections and see what needed to be done next. “Yes, yes!” she’d shout as bit by bit we uncovered or perhaps made the house of Arianrhod on Orkney. As our energy built we spent a night out in the Orkney ‘mizzle’ at a stone circle. During the night, perceptions changed and the stones seemed to move and breathe, and in the dawn light a magical flight of birds seemed to appear and disappear to nowhere. We returned, exhausted, and excitedly began planning the next stage of our week – a labyrinth dance on the beach.

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Fifteen years later, Lyn began work on her film, The Dancing Floor, intended to capture some of the energy and ideas that she had been working with. She wrote a script and then began work on a 15 minutes pilot with help from many friends and artists. She also produced a dance project which was performed at Brechfa Chapel and in Hay-on-Wye. The film of the dance and the pilot are, I think, a great legacy of Lyn’s work.

Rod Thorn