La Panchina Rosa (The Red Bench)

June 23, 2002 at 4 and 5:30pm
Venezia Suona, Venice, Italy

Venezia Suona is an outdoor arts festival that takes place in the neighborhood squares throughout Venice. For this event, Orr worked with fellow dancer Natalie Bowers to choreograph a dance which centered around one of Venice’s most used items, the park bench. Orr and Bowers sought the assistance of three Italian waiters, Marco Cassan, Davide Rizzi and Fabio Tamburini, and one Italian trained dancer, Valentina Moar, to create a dance that turned the bench itself into a stage. The dance was in three sections—an opening duet with Orr and Bowers, a quartet that added Rizzi and Tamburini, and a closing sextet adding Cassan and Moar. The performers jumped on and over the bench, crawled around it, threw each other off the bench, and picked each up. La Panchina Rosa was a highlight of the festivals dance events and given a headline calling the dance delightful by journalist Roberto Lamantea in the Venetian daily paper La Nuova Venezia.