Zerrinnerung

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Görlitz: Theater starts with sold-out house
After six weeks of closure, the dance piece "Zerrinnerung" premiered on the weekend. The visitors gladly tolerated 2G plus.

By Ines Eifler

The good mood in the audience, the joy about finally being able to experience opera, dance, drama, concerts again, was clearly noticeable on Saturday in the theater. That one had to stand in line because of the inspection of the Corona certificates up to the forecourt of the Görlitzer theater, held nobody up thereby.

"At the beginning of the week, we were still worried whether anyone would come to our dance premiere at all," says General Director Daniel Morgenroth. "On Monday, only 70 seats were booked." But after it was announced on Wednesday that cultural events would be allowed to take place again under 2G-plus conditions, the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater's ticket phone could no longer stand still.

By Saturday, all tickets for the premiere of "Zerrinnerung" had been sold, and the maximum capacity of the hall was 250 people. Some of them had spontaneously decided to come to this theater for the first time in six weeks, and some had to be turned away and put off for a later performance. But all those who stayed experienced an exhilarating fireworks display of images, music, moving choreography and a wealth of impressions that will remain in the memories of many. The idea behind the new piece by Dan Pelleg and Marko E. Weigert was an exhibition by the 62-year-old Israeli artist Orly Azran in Tel Aviv. She had lost photographs and memories from 30 years of her life due to a flooding of her storage facility. She developed a selection of negatives that were damaged in the process into new images that showed a remnant of her memories, but more importantly, their transformation.

On stage, many of these images serve as abstract backgrounds, which in bright colors or in black and white look like natural phenomena, glacier landscapes, underwater worlds. The costumes devised by Orly Azran and set designer Britta Bremer are also sewn from fabric bearing motifs from the artworks.

In their movements and danced scenes, the dancers tell impressive stories of the passing of time, of looking back, of love, pain and disappointment, of togetherness and loneliness, as well as of the emergence of art by holding on to and changing what is experienced. The central character of the frame story, an old woman whose memories pass her by at the end of her life, is played by Nora Hageneier, who has been part of the dance company for many years.

The audience cheered enthusiastically at the end. At the premiere celebration in the foyer, however, some visitors, despite all their joy, also expressed their concern about whether the theaters would soon have to close again.