The Past

Memory and empathy are the central themes of the collaboration between the Berlin dance company Constanza Macras/Dorkypark and Hellerau - European Centre of the Arts Dresden. How does the virtual world with its seemingly endless possibilities influence the way we perceive and produce context in the real world? “The Past” investigated various types of memory reconstruction as iconographic, personal and collective practice. “The Past” was a performance based on ‘the city’ as a concrete, geographical location, as an anchor of memory, of imagination and mentality. What happens to people’s memories, what happens to people themselves when they are traumatised by wartime destruction and bombardment? The choreographer Constanza Macras and the dancers in her company DorkyPark spoke with people about a city which only exists today in their memories. From these interviews, they produced an extraordinary dance theatre piece. Based on a tonal landscape specially created for this project by the composer Oscar Bianchi, Macras developed a choreographic work that examined the connection between collective and individual memory, its reconstruction, trauma and the strategies used to overcome it .

Artistic director: Constanza Macras, Music/Composition: Oscar Bianchi, Dramaturge: Carmen Mehnert, Artists: Louis Becker, Emil Bordás, Fernanda Farah, Luc Guiol, Miako Klein, Nile Koetting, Johanna Lemke, Ana Mondini, Felix Saalmann, Miki Shoji, Michael Weilacher.