FRENCH PREMIERE
THE PAST explores the art of memory, or ars memoriae, in which memories are particularly strongly associated with physical locations, rooms and architecture. The starting point is the city as a concrete geographical location, as an anchor for memory, a mental picture and a cast of mind. What happens with our memories, what happens to those who are remembering when these physical places are destroyed? Constanza Macras talked to eyewitnesses who can remember cities that no longer exist in the same form today. The actions in the piece refer to the ancient techniques of ars memoriae, whereby in order to recall the thing to be remembered, we first have to find and organise our impressions. At the heart of this mnemonic technique is spatial orientation. How do we use rooms and places to remember?
The piece explores architectonic places as narrative instruments of our history – in the rewriting of history, for overcoming the wounds of the past, and for understanding contemporary events (personal and global) as part of a constant cycle that we experience as the passing of time. THE PAST is the fruit of a close collaboration with Oscar Bianchi, who composed a music delving into collective and individual memory. Exploring spaces between written and oral practice, the music embodies both the amplitude and the contradictions that rites of passage, communication and memory entail in the sphere of sound, and celebrate sound as a physical, sometime muscular, place where emotional and existential realities find in memory an independent and sometime ruleless form of storage.
CONSTANZA MACRAS was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she studied dance and fashion design, at the Buenos Aires University (UBA). She continued her dance studies in Amsterdam and New York (Merce Cunningham Studios). In 1995, Macras moved to Berlin and danced for various companies. In 1997, she founded her own first company TAMAGOTCHI Y2K. Between 1998 and 2000, TAMAGOTCHI Y2K presented four pieces: Wild Switzerland (1998), Face One (1999), In Between (2000) and Dolce Vita (2000), a site-specific live music performance that combined artists from various disciplines. It was created as a one-time event for each specific location. From 2001 to 2002, Macras developed and presented the trilogy MIR: A Love Story. In 2002, she also curated the project ‘PORNOsotros’, where she performed together with Lisi Estaras (Ballets C. de la B.) under the direction of different directors four short pieces dealing with the subject of pornography at Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin. She taught workshops and master classes in Japan, the United States (Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, ‘On the Boards’ in Seattle, India Atakalari Dance Center), France, Italy (Rome University for Performing Arts), Belgium (Antwerp University), the Netherlands (Henny Jurriens Foundation), Switzerland and Germany (Hochschule fuer Schauspielkunst ‘Ernst Busch’ and at the University of Arts UdK, both in Berlin. In 2008 Constanza Macras received the Goethe-Institut Award for an outstanding German production for her piece HELL ON EARTH. In 2010 she was awarded with the Arts at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) William L. Abramowitz Residency. Since 1961, the series has brought renowned performing artists and writers to MIT to perform, present public lectures, and collaborate with students in free programs. In the same year Constanza Macras was awarded the national German theater-prize DER FAUST for best choreography for the piece MEGALOPOLIS.
PRODUCTIONS
THE GHOSTS (2015) In THE GHOSTS Constanza Macras worked with a marginalized social group in China : acrobats and circus performers. They recall the “hungry ghosts” of Chinese popular mythology. The piece allows them a return to the land of living, making their art and their stories visible once again.
ON FIRE – THE INVENTION OF TRADITION (2015) deals with the re-evaluation of heritage and tradition in relation to segregated cultural groups, which are being articulated in new ways in urban life – and with self-defined contemporary practices and rituals. Macras works with a mixed cast of South African and Berlin-based performers in collaboration with the Johannesburg-based artist Ayana V. Jackson, whose photography interrogates and deconstructs other aspects of a specific chapter that we might add to the history of “invented traditions”: the visual representation of the “other” in historical and journalistic photography.
THE PAST (2014) is a piece, consisting in two parts, which deals with the art of memory. In this production, Constanza Macras and her company DorkyPark investigates the relations between memories and real places, using local history and interviews from eyewitnesses of the Dresden bombing 1945. It is the result from a close collaboration with the composer Oscar Bianchi. The 2nd part of “The Past”, which will premier in spring 2016, will focus the separation of memories and real places in our digital era.
THE TRUTH ABOUT MONTE VERITÁ (2013) is an interactive expressionistic film installation and live performance, with focus on the reform efforts of Rudolf von Laban (1879-1958), whose summer courses on Monte Veritá were a important starting point for german expressive dance. The piece is part of Constanza Macras | DorkyPark performance cycle “The Nature of Crisis”.
FOREST: THE NATURE OF CRISIS (2013) is a theatrical tour of the Müggelwald forest, accompanied by dance, performance art, texts and music. It questions, during an era of crisis, the return to the nature and explores the associated desires and the significance of the regional in times of a global crisis.
OPEN FOR EVERYTHING (2012) In this special production Constanza Macras is drawing the attention to the current situation of the Romani-people in Middle and Eastern Europe. The piece is created with Romani musicians and performers who team up with performers of the company.
HERE/AFTER (2011) Created and performed by four dancers and one musician. A piece about Agoraphobia.
BERLIN ELSEWHERE (2011) Created and performed by ten dancers and two musicians who explore the borders of segregation and madness in our modern society.
THE OFFSIDE RULES (2010) In this special collaboration, three performers from Constanza Macras’ company team up with dancers from Johannesburg to reflect on the first African World Cup.
MEGALOPOLIS (2009) Created and performed by ten dancers and three musicians, deals with the phenomenon of megacities as a paradigm for spaces on which people live without knowing each other.
OEDIPUS REX (2009) The creation of Constanza Macras’ first opera project. Igor Stravinsky’s OEDIPUS REX for eight dancers. It premiered in November 2009 with the collaboration of the Dresdener Kammerchor and Festspielhaus Hellerau. The Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, with whom Constanza Macras realized the project IN SILENCE at the Kanagawa Art Foundation of Yokohama in 2008, designed the stage.
HELL ON EARTH (2008) a piece dealing with the stories of teenagers from immigrated families living in the Berlin district of Neukölln.
PARAÍSO SEM CONSOLAÇÃO (2008) Together with 12 Brazilian dancers and two musicians Constanza Macras has developed and elaborated this project in São Paulo. The result reflects the working process: the quest for what makes the individual so special, and the way the individual stands its ground against the city’s levelling down.
BRICKLAND (2007) Named after a vacant residential development in Buenos Aires, Brickland is not revealed as a concrete location but rather as a symbol of many cities in the globalized world that are, in essence, interchangeable: gated communities as we know from the United States, South America, India or China.
I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE (created in 2006, premiered in January 2007) In this project Constanza Macras follows the heroes’ and heroines’ different journeys breaking through obstacles and difficulties to the archetypal images.
SURE, SHALL WE TALK ABOUT IT ? (2005) A piece about the expectations put over the female body related to fitness, wellnee and brands performed at the Milano Fashion Week and Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, by eleven female dancers from different countries accompanied by three musicians.
NO WONDER (2005) created in collaboration with Lisi Estaras. A research about the gender roles in the superlative from the 1970ies till today.
BIG IN BOMBAY (2005) ‚Kill time or it’s dead time’. Constanza Macras and her company are exploring the questions of cultural identity and stardom.
BACK TO THE PRESENT (2004) Site specific. The first production of the company CONSTANZA MACRAS | DorkyPark was the site specific version Back to the Present. Back to the Present was integrated into a derelict early 20th century department store the Kaufhaus Jandorf, in the middle of Berlin. Almost 6 hours long, Back to the Present was presented to audiences throughout the house.
SCRATCH NEUKÖLLN (2003) merging the company with ten pre-teens from recently immigrated families living in Berlin district of Neukölln. Performed at Hebbel Am Ufer HAU.
Next to her productions with her company, Constanza Macras has also created Paraiso sem Consolação (2008) a commission work of the Goethe Institut São Paulo with dancers from the company and a Brazilian cast. Premiered in São Paulo; Ein Sommernachtsraum (2006) together with Thomas Ostermeier, the Schaubühne ensemble and dancers from DorkyPark, Premiered at the Hellenic Festival; Pegarle a la Bolsa (2004) a commission from the Goethe-Institut Cordoba (Argentina) and Happiness (2003) for the Saarländisches Staatstheater Ballet.
