Orange is not alone. A dance theatre piece by Neele Buchholz and Tomas Bünger

Das Team des Deutschen Tanzfilminstitut Bremen zeichnet die Generalprobe auf.

“Orange Is Not Alone” is about people, about feelings, about differences. It’s about colors, about encounters, about togetherness. In this dance theater piece, eight dancers with and without disabilities move on stage. They move in spaces. They move in, they move within, they move together. They move out, they move into another space.

Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. Sometimes chaos, sometimes a storm. Together somewhere in a party cellar. Dancing together, like they’re really going wild. They hold each other, they belong together. They are very close, they are connected. They play, they take each other seriously. Not still like a statue, not boring. Everyone is important, no one is excluded. Everyone sits in the corner. Blue like friendship, pink like soft and chewing gum, green like longing, yellow like an open window, purple like a paint box, black like the night. Skin like a person, feeling and transparent. Orange wants to be seen, Orange belongs in the group. Maybe we’ll go out onto the balcony and watch a rainbow scatter. Maybe we’ll find a space—for me, for you, for us. Maybe we’ll find it here.

Neele Buchholz (born 1991 in Bremen) is a freelance dancer and actress with Down syndrome. She has performed on stage more than 300 times both in Germany and abroad (including “T4. Ophelia’s Garden,” directed by David Stöhr) and has appeared in film productions (including “Eldorado KaDeWe,” directed by Julia von Heinz). She began her career in 2013 as a permanent dancer with tanzbar bremen e.V. Since 2022, she has worked full-time as a freelance artist. The themes of equality and love often play an important role in her artistic work.

Tomas Bünger studied classical and modern stage dance and was a long-time member of the Bremen Dance Theatre. He subsequently completed an inclusive dance teacher training program in New York and was a guest lecturer at the University of the Arts in Buenos Aires. He worked regularly in Bangladesh for many years with the support of the Goethe-Institut and was an artistic resident in Togo, Romania, and India. He received various teaching appointments. The focus of his choreographic work is the human being as dancer and their relationship to the world.

The ensemble of “Orange Is Not Alone” was selected following a casting call by Neele and Tom in a joint audition.

Co-production: Schwankhalle. Funded by the Performing Arts Fund with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Senator for Culture Bremen, the Waldemar Koch Foundation, and Sparkasse Bremen.