Boundary-defying dance-theater creator Constanza Macras discusses her approach to text and movement in a lecture as part of MIT Performing.

Over the past two decades, the Argentina-born, Germany-based Macras has built an international reputation as a director-choreographer of uncommon eclecticism and unbridled kineticism. Her high-energy pieces have tackled such subjects as the fate of Chinese acrobats (The Ghosts); the arc of memory, particularly in Germany (The Past); Roma communities in Europe (Open for Everything); and, most notably, the social, physical and human structure of cities, especially the way a physical location has an impact on how we think, move, interact and even remember (2019’s Der Palast, 2010’s Megalopolis, and 2007’s Brickland, among others).

“I try to bring a dramaturgical form to things that are not in dramatic form, and look very absurd at the same time,” Macras says. “It’s about the display of tension.”