November 2026

What it is

The 5 Rhythms are a movement practice born in the Seventies from Gabrielle Roth. There are no figures or choreographies to learn: you follow the music through five rhythms — flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness — which one after the other form a wave. You dance on your own and among others, and everyone moves however it comes.

No class

Nothing is taught: you practice, or you watch how it's done. Someone who just started dances with someone who's been at it for twenty years.

Even if you don't dance

The Banco A Ristoro is open, the kitchen is cooking, and sitting down doesn't commit you to anything.

What it is

Activity by Seesaw Project, artistic direction by Veronica Boniotti. Three Saturdays to explore, through the body, play, contemporary dance and physical theater, the way we live emotions, boundaries, desire, closeness, distance, consent and choice. To try out new ways of being with ourselves and with others. And to sharpen the technique of really asking ourselves how we are!

Open to neurotypical and neurodivergent people, with and without disabilities, with and without experience in dance or theater. No prerequisites, no need to be easygoing or cool, no need to tell your business. Just a bit of curiosity and the urge to switch off your brain and see what happens!

What it is

Yoga from 10.30 am to 11.45 am, with Claudio Cicatiello. No experience needed, and if you don't have a mat we'll lend you one. The Brunch Musicale starts at 12, and is paid separately. You get there with a straight back, which helps at the buffet.

No rush

A moment made for taking your time and sharing it, in a space that's elegant, unusual and welcoming.

Book a table

From 12:00 to 3:30 pm. If you're coming as a group you can book, and you should: the second Sunday the lounge fills up.

From the outside you see little

The legs stay close and almost everything happens in the weight and the connection to the floor: that's how the pioneers told it apart from “dancing for spectators.” It's a dance that gives more than it promises when you watch it, and you only get it by trying it.

Four afternoons a season

One in November, one in January, one in March and one in May, always on a Sunday. From 2 to 4 pm the first level, for anyone who has never done Balboa; from 4:30 to 5:30 pm an open class on one topic, for those who have. The afternoon social dance starts at 5 pm.

What it is

The school welcomes those who have just arrived. An afternoon to get to know each other outside class, with the floor open and time to talk.

Then you stay

Drinks and snacks are included, and so are the icebreaker games. The swing night follows.

Who comes

Students, expats, people here on Erasmus, travelers — and anyone who wants to meet new people in Florence.

From three to seven

The afternoon runs from 3 to 7 pm, and inside it you move around: you come for one thing and stay for another.

What goes on

The constant is the Circolo di Lettura. The others change and take turns — pastry, sewing and embroidery, painting, sign language — and any Saturday can bring a new one.

It ends at the table

Every session ends with a friendly aperitivo, the moment when people who didn't know each other start talking.

What it is

«I was never scared.» Through the pages of a book, the Renny's Reading Club meets Josephine Baker: artist, dancer, free woman, spy with the Resistance and tireless civil rights activist. An extraordinary figure, able to reinvent herself over and over and to turn her voice and her fame into tools of freedom and change.

We meet in the Renny's vintage lounge to read, share feelings and opinions, and let ourselves be provoked by the story of a woman who crossed the twentieth century without letting the conventions of her time define her. An informal, friendly meeting to discover, page after page, not only Josephine Baker the artist, but above all the woman who chose to react, to change and to take a stand.

The meeting lasts about an hour, and is in collaboration with L'Eredità delle Donne.