Bitef

Photo / Foto: Marco Caselli Nirmal

BIG IN BOMBAY A waiting room. It looks, at first sight, like any waiting room anywhere in the world. Different characters sit around, waiting, killing time. Each one shares this waiting time with unknown people, each one of them seems to be waiting for something else. Suddenly, the waiting room starts changing according to different situations taking place; becoming a bus station, a consultory, a waiting room for an audition. A casting starts and the room opens up. Everybody is constantly being watched. On stage, following the tradition of Bollywood, an eclectic mix of pop music, political slogans, consumption, Bollywood choreographies and telenovelas are unleashed. However, all that seems to be new here has been already established somewhere else. Statements such as "no pasarán" decorate only Ché Guevara T-Shirts, their meaning is completely lost. Although these people are in one room, they seem to be at different places in the world. It could also only be happening inside their heads. Here starts the paranoia. Their own world closes around them, captures them with all their fears, their thoughts and their bad consciousness: Why doesn't anything bad happen to me when around me everything seems to be going wrong? Everybody acts for himself, catapulting all thoughts and actions into space. Where does this all lead to? Time accelerates or seems to stand still. Each one tries desperately to stand out against the crowd, to escape from the reality of their everyday-life and their cultural identity. One assumes contexts, identities and images to then find out that everybody else is doing the same thing. Everybody knew it all from the beginning and... haven't we met before? CONSTANZA MAGRAS Constanza Macras was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, w h e re she studied dance and fashion design, developing her own work and dancing with various groups. She continued her dance education in New York at Merce Cunningham Studio and Movement Research. She then moved to Amsterdam where she presented her own work at Dans Werkplaats (Enter-tainment Inc., 1995) and made performances for different clubs. Macras moved to Berlin in 1995, dancing for various companies, and in 1997, she founded her own company'Tamagotchi Y2K'(originally 'Lonely Tamagotchi'). Between 1998 and 2000, Tamagotchi Y2K presented four pieces: Wild Switzerland (1998), Face One (1999), In Between (2000) and Dolce Vita (2000), all of which have been seen in various venues in Berlin and across Europe. From 2001 to 2002, Macras (in collaboration with Theater am Halleschen Ufer, Sophiensæle, and the 'Tanz im August'festival) developed and presented the MIR-A Love Story trilogy ( Prologue, The Conquer, and Endurance) which has since played in London at The Place Theater. Her work PORNOsotros (2002) was presented at Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, a coproduction of Tamagotchi Y2K, Grand Theatre Groningen, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz and 'TanzNacht Berlin 2002'.