BACK to the PRESENT

Born in 1970 in Buenos Aires, Constanza Macras discovered in Berlin, an air of permanent revolution, de-mined history and the buzz of a work-site which has enabled her to choregraph a borderless troupe on traces of individual and collective memory. Radical and joyful, the performances by the Dorky Park Company play on conventions and codes, besiege venues with modernity and recycle images of its own generation with the reinvigorating power of anger and spirit.


Back to the present, projection into the past. The young company, Dorky Park, loses itself in a dance of private memories in an age where television reality shows are turning our lives into a permanent soap opera. Gentle, personal accounts of childhood or rattles stuffed with generalised lies, soft toys waltz on a stage crammed with moving panels, a stage transformed into a jam session where memories and regrets abound. For the stream of images is not enough to sweep away our dead leaves – shared cinema tickets, scrunched up phone numbers, scribbled words on bits of paper. Snatches of conversations of bygone loves, a break in tone: farewells, not letting go, hating each other in a breathless duo of musical chairs; losing keys or a pair of Gucci sunglasses, losing a job or a grand-mother – it's all the same. Adults who haven't grown up play forbidden games to the sound of classic pop or old-fashioned favourite tunes. An amusing and fantastical video film introduces each character in this ballet where “we dance while we love, where we love while we dance”, around childhood fears, neurotic obsessions, comical and traumatic monomania, to a Latino version of “Yesterday”. One is looking for a community so as not to vegetate, another is scared of ending up as a house plant. All refuse to watch life go past in front of those screens which rub out margins, smooth out bumps. The firey and generous troupe of actor/musician/dancers led by Constanza Macras occupies a space of possibles in a present time we thought was without a past.

direction and choreography : Constanza Macras
created and performed by : Knut Berger, Diane Busuttil, Joris Camelin, Nir De-Volff, Jill Emerson, Claus Erbskorn, Jared Gradinger, Arik Hayut, Maike Möller, Rahel Savoldelli, Dave Taylor, Yeri Anarika Vargas Sanchez
dramaturg : Carmen Mehnert
costumes : Gilvan Coelho de Oliviera
scenography : Patrice Wisniewski
music : Claus Erbskorn, Arik Hayut
video : Constanza Macras, Kevin Slavin

production : Constanza Macras/Dorky Park (Berlin) et Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz (Berlin)
coproduction : Sophiensaele, Lille 2004 - Capitale Européenne de la Culture, Maison des Arts de Créteil
avec le soutien : de la Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin, du Sénat de Berlin, de la déléguée à la Culture et au Média du Gouvernement Fédéral allemand et du ministère des Affaires étrangères allemand