Parent and Pre-School Week
PARENT AND PRE-SCHOOL CLASSES
Starts Monday 10th to Friday 14th August 2009
From 2pm - 3pm
Cost £20 /£10 concession
(Family discounts available)
Echo Echo Studio, Waterside Theatre, L'Derry
Sometimes it seems a long way down from 5ft 6" to 2ft or less.
Adults can feel awkward and clumsy joining their wee ones on their own level. This one-week course for under 5s provides a gentle and playful opportunity for mums and dads to get down, play and explore movement with their kids.
Book your place now with Echo Echo by calling 028 7134 2266, e-mail info@echoechodance.com or visit www.echoechodance.com for more details.
Legacy Trust projects coming soon
Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company is pleased to announce that it is one of six arts organisations based in Northern Ireland taking part in a major series of arts and cultural events in the lead up to the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Echo Echo is the lead arts partner for the Dance and Sport theme of the Legacy Trust UK Connections Programme which is managed by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
Into Contact with Dance and Sport will develop and deliver an outstanding programme of sport themed dance events in partnership with high calibre partner organisations in Northern Ireland, emphasising the skill, beauty and magic of dance and sport.
Performance strands will focus on sports with less exposure offering the chance for these activities to gain a higher profile. A series of inspirational site-specific performance events is currently in development linking dance with sports and games including climbing, chess, team sports and Olympic sports.
The education strand of the project will focus on the position of dance as a Physical Education element of the Revised Curriculum; the lack of dance skills development opportunities for teachers and facilitators; and the promotion of creativity, health and wellbeing benefits of dance for young people and in schools.
The audience development strand will deliver increased participation, profile and awareness through a series of high quality workshop programmes and masterclasses.
The Into Contact with Dance and Sport project will be launched in January 2010 and programme activities will run over three years to autumn 2012.
Legacy Trust UK is an independent charity set up to ensure a lasting legacy for local communities from London 2012.
The other five lead arts partner organisations delivering projects in Northern Ireland are The BEAT Initiative, Open Arts, The BEAM Centre, Northern Ireland Screen and the Ulster Orchestra.
Echo Echo Pick'n'Mix review
DANCE REVIEW: Echo Echo Pick 'n' Mix Double Bill
Derry dance company's short, sweet show of two halves will live long in the memory
The Pick'n'Mix Mini Festival at Belfast's Old Museum Arts Centre is mainly about showcasing new work by established and emerging Northern theatre companies. But this year dance also features prominently on the programme, with contrasting performances from two influential companies - Ponydance and Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company.
Echo Echo is one of Ireland's leading dance companies. Founded in 1991 in Amsterdam by Steve Batts and Ursula Laubli, it relocated to Derry in 1997 and has been based there ever since.
The company works on a number of levels, producing and promoting popular interest, participation and education in dance and movement, as well as presenting audiences with a far-reaching, sometimes challenging slate of influences, from inside and outside the mainstream dance traditions.
Saturday's performance at Pick'n'Mix is all about bridging the generation gap with Under Current, a colourful piece that invites children and their parents or adult companions into a madcap world of fairytales and nursery rhymes, inhabited by strange creatures and colourful toys. The company takes delight in breaking the rules and having a laugh and the joy on the emerging audience's faces after the production speaks volumes for what they have just experienced.
Sunday's double bill sees a dramatic change of mood, as the company enters the world of abstract movement and experimentation, combined with voice, music and poetry.
A Poetic Phrase of Turns, as the witty title suggests, is a deliberate inversion, a quiet, contemplative piece set not to music but to the persistent beat of a metronome.
Before launching into a stealthy, carefully crafted series of interconnected sequences, Batts explains that the metronome is set to 55 beats per minute, the resting pace of a healthy human heart. Hence, everything that is to follow will move with a normal human pulse and meter, examining the seemingly limitless combinations of physical movement, facial expressions and emotion that naturally flow through the five chakras of the body.
In this at once instinctive yet hugely disciplined solo piece, Batts invites the audience to bring their own imaginations and inner feelings into the equation of body, mind and spirit. There is something completely mesmerising about the way in which he navigates a path through a maze of poses and counterpoints, each tiny energy point sparking off new, carefully controlled movements - some large and expansive, others minute yet distinctive.
This minimalist, technical piece is not designed to be a crowd pleaser, yet the thrill is in witnessing something infinite and constantly evolving - A Poetic Phrase of Turns will be different each time. It is designed to question and subvert our notion of what it is that constitutes dance; that it can be something amorphous, mysterious, even when stripped of narrative and sound - except, here, for the relentlessly ticking metronome.
In Free Flight Batts is joined by Lorna McLaughlin of The Henry Girls, a group with whom the company has worked on previous collaborations. The piece was commissioned for the Cuirt Festival in Galway and inspired by the humorous poem of the same title by the black American poet, the late June Jordan.
Free Flight ticks off the minutiae in life, which preoccupy us - lists, priorities, people, places, food, tasks, pets. McLaughlin's deep-throated singing creates a cacophony of sounds, some sweet, some funny, some downright weird. Beside her, Batts clicks into overdrive, his expressive movements and subtle facial expressions bringing to manic life the astute and passionate stream of consciousness that drives the poetry.
Echo Echo's short, sweet show of two halves will live long in this year's Pick'n'Mix memories.
Jane Coyle
Link to article on Culture NI website
:: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 :: 
)
)
)
)