Contentinformation
by Noora Oertel
The choreography “Orlando is dead”, made by the British dancer, choreographer and director Jean Renshaw (born on November the 4th 1964 in Manchester) for the dance ensemble of the theatre of Nürnberg, was part of the twenty-four hours long dance event Ein Fest für Orlando (transl. A Celebration for Orlando), that was organized at the Tafelhalle Nürnberg between the 25th and the 26th of June 1994. Renshaws piece was performed twice at the event.
The organization and production of the whole event was made by Jean Renshaw, as well as the director, producer and dramaturge Dirk Elwert and the dancer, producer Uwe Möller and it was done in cooperation with the Nürnberger Aids-Hilfe. The event was a response to the death of their colleague and friend Orlando Fornaris, a Cuban dancer who died from AIDS in April 1991. The purpose of the event was to address the silent dying of especially young homosexual men, from which the classical dance scene was also largely effected at the time of the epidemic in the 1980s and the early 1990s in Germany.
Jean Renshaw: The approach for me was definitely the death of a friend and therefore a very emotional thing. I just didn’t want him to disappear without a sound. We were both engaged as dancers in Nürnberg for two years and we were friends. Before that, we were also working in Darmstadt together in the same company. […] Suddenly, a year later, when I tried to contact him, he was already gone. And I think that was, that shock just moved me. […]
Uwe Möller: I remember, the title was to be fixed pretty fast: “Orlando is dead”.
Dirk Elwert: Because that was the sentence, that you heard, after you asked about Orlando from a friend on the telephone. You had not heard from him for a long time and then your friend said: "Yes, but Orlando is dead ". And that became the topic. [Interview with Jean Renshaw, Uwe Möller and Dirk Elwert on the 16th of June 2019 at the opera house of Leipzig]
At the event, that was also known as the “dance marathon”, altogether one-hundred-fifty dancers from thirty different dance companies performed, including the Batsheva Dance Company from Tel Aviv (Israel), the S.O.A.P. Dance Theatre from Frankfurt (Germany), the Geijutsuza ensemble from Yokohama (Japan) and the Netherlands Dance Theatre from Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and many others.
After the event “Ein Fest für Orlando” the piece “Orlando is dead” was performed 1995 at the Tafelhalle Nürnberg and at the "Kan i Hoken Hal” in Tokio (Japan), 1996 at the theatre house of Jena, 1998 at the theatre Greifswald and the theater Nordhausen and 2002 at the theatre of Schwerin.
