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“The hard life began on the day I ended my career. I have no flat, no job and no regular income,” says the Chinese acrobat Cheng Fei, seven-times national champion and world champion. “The flowers, the applause, the flags – it feels like a different life.” On the scrapheap by their mid-twenties, on their own, with no social security, often lacking formal education and job prospects – in “THE GHOSTS” Constanza Macras worked with Chinese circus acrobats. It looks like these former acrobats, who once won fame and fortune for their country with their bodily discipline, have been forgotten and ‘decommissioned’ by Chinese society, even though many of them are still quite young. They recall the ‘hungry ghosts’ – according to Chinese popular mythology, lost souls who have been forgotten by their descendents and lead a miserable existence in an intermediate world. For Macras the former acrobats’ materially precarious, ghostly condition is a metaphor for life in contemporary China, with it contradictions, social injustice and power structures. Those who once brought the country glory and honour are discarded as soon as acrobatics itself began to be seen as a privileged form of entertainment for the bourgeoisie. “I was born into a poor family, joined an acrobatic troupe when I was only eight years old. My exceptional talent enabled me to rise from student ranks to become the troupe’s top woman acrobat. However, as the troupe became increasingly mixed up by radical politics it was discontinued. Two years later, me and several other performers were ordered to work in a textile factory. The following year, I was sent to work in the country side and believed that I would never return to perform acrobatics again. Unexpectedly, the troupe’s leaders sent me a message urging my return to work. During 6 years I did not practice at all and gave birth to two children. I was already twenty-nine. I thought since the leaders wanted me to do it, I must not complain. The Revolutionary Committee of Shanghai decided to entertain the US visitors with ‘traditional acrobatics’ because the committee believed foreigners would not be able to understand chinese revolutionary operas. We went to the United States on tour. The officials told us even if people threw things at our stage, we must continue our performance.” The decision to send an acrobatic troupe overseas reflected Chinese leaders’ ideas about how to communicate ‘Chinese-ness’ to US audience through the acrobatic body. Such cultural policy would enable Beijing to export acrobatics as ‘Chinese heritage’ and, at the same time, achieve its political objectives in the Cold War. “When our tour started in Chicago, a gas bomb exploded in the theater. The tear gas did not dissipate easily, but me and my colleagues resumed our performance, despite our tearing eyes and pain.” We might make things that break easily, but we people don’t.

Constanza Macras was born in 1970 in Buenos Aires, where she studied dance and fashion design. She completed her dance training in Amsterdam and at the Merce Cunningham Studio in New York, and showed her first choreographies in Amsterdam. In 1995 she moved to Berlin, founded her first company, Tamagotchi Y2K, in 1997, and developed performances and dance pieces with artists from a wide variety of disciplines. In 2003 Marcas established the dance-theatre company Costanza Macras | DorkyPark in collaboration with the dramaturge Carmen Mehnert. The company brings together dancers, actors, musicians and artists working in various genres and countries, and combines dance, video, text and live music. In 2008 Constanza Macras’ “Hell on Earth” was awarded the Goethe-Institut Prize for the best production from Germany. In 2010 she was invited to take up the ‘Arts at MIT William L. Abramowitz Residency’ at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and received the German Theatre Prize, ‘Der Faust’, for “Megalopolis”. Constanza Macras leads workshops and master classes at Berlin universities, and has been invited to choreograph and teach in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, the United States and elsewhere. Her company regularly collaborates with theatres such as HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz and HELLERAU – European Centre of Arts Dresden. Apart from the projects for her own company, Constanza Macras has also created works for other institutions, including “Happiness”, for the ballet of the Saarländisches Staatstheater in 2003, and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, with Thomas Ostermeier at the Schaubühne in 2006.