Company Profile
Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company is recognised as Northern Ireland's leading Dance Company. It was created by Ursula Laeubli and Steve Batts in Amsterdam in 1991 and after six years of project work in Europe it relocated to Derry, Northern Ireland where it has since become a key influence in the development of dance theatre in Ireland.
Echo Echo regularly produces and tours internationally with original new performance work for an ensemble of local and international dancers. The company also has a strong commitment to developing dance as an accessible art form maintaining a busy dance education and outreach programme for people of all ages and abilities.
It is the company's movement style and ethos that sets it apart from the crowd with influences ranging from the quirky and playful to gentle and poetic, sourcing its movement material from a very wide range of contemporary dance forms and movement practices.
Echo Echo's team of staff, artists and volunteers has flourished in recent years, generating a diverse and exciting programme of education and performance work.
Mission & Values
MISSION STATEMENT
Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company exists to produce professional dance theatre productions and to promote interest, participation and education in dance and movement at all levels, basing its practice on a wide range and experience of movement influences from inside and outside the main dance traditions.
VALUES
· The approach to all the work of Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company is centrally informed by the observation that there is a two-way creative interaction between teaching/outreach work and the process of creating and performing new professional work.
· Echo Echo aim to actively contribute to a developing movement culture where people taking their "first steps" should have the opportunity to see and participate in the work of more experienced movement artists.
· At the same time, and just as importantly, it is necessary for "specialists" to have their work stimulated by the constant challenge of the movement culture of the general society.
· Echo Echo recognise the necessity, within the above context, for artists to have ongoing support for their own, in-depth, creative development and expression of new work.
· The work of Echo Echo is based on the notion of the poetry of movement. The company sees its movement art as having a similar relationship to everyday movement as poetry does to the everyday use of words.
· Echo Echo sources its material in a wide range of areas, for example, martial arts, clowning, physical theatre, folk and vernacular dance forms, therapeutic movement practices, and other movement based performance forms.
· Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company aims to work as far as possible in an ensemble fashion. This prioritises ongoing and long-term creative relationships that lead to deeper and more effective work.
