Memory Is Fragile Garbage Lasts Forever
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MEMORY IS FRAGILE GARBAGE LASTS FOREVER INDEX CONSTANZA MACRAS |DORKYPARK SHOWS OPEN FOR EVERYTHING HERE/AFTER BERLIN ELSEWHERE THE OFFSIDE RULES MEGALOPOLIS OEDIPUS REX HELL ON EARTH BRICKLAND I´M NOT THE ONLY ONE SURE, SHALL WE TALK ABOUT IT? NO WONDER BIG IN BOMBAY BACK TO THE PRESENT UPCOMING PIECES PIECES FOR TOURING TOURING CONTACT CONSTANZA MACRAS Constanza Macras was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she In 2008 Constanza Macras received the GOETHE-INSTITUT Award for an outstanding German studied dance and fashion design, at the Buenos Aires University production for her piece Hell On Earth. (UBA). She continued her dance studies in Amsterdam and New York (Merce Cunningham Studios). In 1995, Macras moved to Berlin and In 2010 she was awarded with the Arts at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) William danced for various companies. In 1997, she founded her own first L. Abramowitz Residency. Since 1961, the series has brought renowned performing artists and company TAMAGOTCHI Y2K. writers to MIT to perform, present public lectures, and collaborate with students in free Between 1998 and 2000, TAMAGOTCHI Y2K presented four pieces: programs. Wild Switzerland (1998), Face One (1999), In Between (2000) and Dolce Vita (2000), a site-specific live music performance that com- In the same year Constanza Macras was awarded the national German theater-prize DER FAUST bined artists from various disciplines. It was created as a one-time for best choreography for the piece Megalopolis. event for each specific location. Next to her productions with her company Constanza Macras | DorkyPark, Constanza Macras From 2001 to 2002, Macras developed and presented the trilogy MIR: has also created: A Love Story. In 2002, she also curated the project ‘PORNOsotros’, where she per- - Paraíso sem Concolação (2008) a commission work of the GOETHE-INSTITUT São Paulo with formed together with Lisi Estaras (Ballets C. de la B.) under the direc- dancers from the company and a Brazilian cast. Premiered in São Paulo. tion of different directors four short pieces dealing with the subject of - Ein Sommernachtstraum (2006) together with Thomas Ostermeier, the Schaubühne ensemble pornography at Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin . and dancers from Constanza Macras | DorkyPark. Premiered at the Hellenic Festival. She taught workshops and master classes in Japan, the United States - Pegarle a la Bolsa (2004) a commission from the GOETHE-INSTITUT Cordoba (Argentina). (Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, ‘On the Boards’ in Seattle, India - Happiness (2003) for the ballet of the Saarländisches Staatstheater. Atakalari Dance Center), France, Italy (Rome University for Perform- ing Arts), Belgium (Antwerp University), the Netherlands (Henny Jurriëns Foundation), Switzerland and Germany (Hochschule für Schauspielkunst ‘Ernst Busch’ Berlin and at the University of Arts UdK Berlin). CONSTANZA MACRAS | DORKYPARK In 2003 Constanza Macras | DorkyPark was created by Constanza Macras and dramaturge Carmen Mehnert. The company integrates dancers, actors and musicians with performers that range from 4 to 72 years old, combining text, live music, dance and video. Constanza Macras | DorkyPark has toured in Korea, Japan, India, Indonesia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, South Africa, The United States of America and has been invited to various European venues and festivals like Festival d’Avignon in France and Aarhus Festival in Denmark. The company and its productions are supported by Capital Cultural Fund and the Govern- ing Mayor of Berlin – Department for Cultural Affairs and the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Furthermore, the company works regularly with HELLERAU – European Center for the Arts Dresden and Berlin based venues such as Hebbel am Ufer and Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz. Constanza Macras and her company have been supported by and collaborating with the GOETHE-INSTITUT since 2005. Photo: Constanza Macras OPEN FOR EVERYTHING Photo: Thomas Aurin Thomas Photo: OPEN FOR EVERYTHING is a travel through the stagnation of Roma communities in Europe to “In the show’s programme, Macras whom chances to work like any other citizen are rather low, where itinerant traditions have been claims to hate the “theatre of commis- replaced by sedentary life beside the uprootedness of the group of dancers that move around the eration”, and she manages to tread the world following working opportunities. fine line between being deeply moved and falling into commiseration without Since 2010 Macras has been researching the different ways of life, dance styles and music of the ever stepping over it. Her two years of Roma in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In the course of this work she has brought research have resulted in an evening full together a large ensemble comprising Roma musicians and performers, amateurs of different of lust for life and music, a Roma revue ages, and dancers from her company DorkyPark to perform in her new show Open for Everything. that nonetheless refers to poverty and It is with great aplomb that these very different people recount their lives and their dreams, their dearth of opportunity in powerful images despair and their passions. This journey uses music and dance to lead us through the lives of the and with a sense of self-irony.” European Roma of today, seizing upon, playing with, and depicting with humour the prejudices, Wiener Zeitung, May 2012 clichés, misunderstandings, similarities, traditions, discrimination, poverty and violence. Who is making use of whose prejudices? And just who are the true nomads of the 21st century? “A disparate, non-folkloristic picture of life emerges, one that is full of difficulty The production was created by Constanza Macras in cooperation with 18 Roma musicians, and yet life-affirming. Macras looks at dancers and amateurs of different ages from Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, and her subject head on – she doesn’t want with six performers from the dance company CONSTANZA MACRAS | DorkyPark who come from victim art or romanticising, what she Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, the Czech Republic and South-Korea. wants is for all performers on the stage to be equal, and this she achieves.” dradio Kultur, May 2012 A production by CONSTANZA MACRAS | DorkyPark and the GOETHE-INSTITUT. In co-production with Wiener Festwochen, New Stage of National Theatre Prague, Trafó House of Contemporary Arts Budapest, Interna- tional Theatre Festival Divadelná Nitra, Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, HELLERAU – European Center for the Arts Dresden, Dansens Hus Stockholm and Zürcher Theater Spektakel. Supported by the Capital Cultural Fund and the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Department for Cultural Affairs and the Open Society Foundations- with contribution of the Arts and Culture Program of Budapest. HERE/AFTER Agoraphobia is the fear of certain, especially public and vast spaces, as well as of masses of “Agoraphobia is a rather healthy people. In the Western world agoraphobia is actually the phobia that is diagnosed most often. response to a rather unhealthy It causes panic attacks, in many cases people no longer dare to go out of their homes. environment, says Macras, and her Although medicine has a tendency to consider it as a psychological, even physiological defect performers confirm that with charm of the individual some critical studies point out to a necessity to look for the reasons for this and crackling persuasiveness.” illness in the nature and in the circumstances of the space itself – meaning to analyse the city Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 2011 as a possible cause. In HERE/AFTER Constanza Macras along with four performers and one musician seeks to find “For Macras, Here/After is a down- out more about this clinical pattern with all its peculiarities like hyperventilation, panic attacks, right concentrated work. Instead of dizziness and disorientation. Does everyday life in a metropolis pose a threat to the people? fraying the scenes into a whirlwind Are panic attacks in a shopping mall not a natural human form of defense, and why do they of multiple parallel actions, like in have to be treated in a therapy? This play explores the relation between anonymity and growing “Megalopolis”, most of the images and isolation, of the individual and urban life, of public spaces and their pathological manifestations. situations are quite clearly We will see flats with nightmarish narrowness, we will encounter two women who live together structured.” and who come up with all kinds of excuses to convince one another not having to leave home www.tanznetz.de, December 2011 anymore. There will be a lonely musician whose only dream to become a rockstar ends with his terrible fear of big gatherings of people; a foreigner who never speaks; and a delivery man who is the only link between these people and the dreaded “outside”. Never before has it been so easy to be “by oneself” in a society which makes a confrontation with the “outside” avoidable through the sheer endless possibilities of communicating via the internet, chatrooms and delivery services. And actually what is it out there that one absolutely has to experience live? A production by CONSTANZA MACRAS | DorkyPark and HAU Berlin. Funded by Hauptstadt- kulturfonds and the Regierenden Bürgermeister von Berlin – Senatskanzlei – Kulturelle Angelegenheiten. Aurin Thomas Photo: Special Thanks to: BERLIN ELSEWHERE Photo: Thomas Aurin Thomas Photo: In BERLIN ELSEWHERE strangers meet at a place of mental captivity. They’re suffering