Who is the Argentine choreographer of Poor Creatures, the film starring Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo nominated for 11 Oscars?

“I have become what I hated, the succubus who takes over my lover,” fumes Duncan Wedderburn, the friendly heartthrob played by Marco Ruffalo in a scene set in a belle epoque restaurant in Lisbon halfway through the film Poor Creatures, by Yorgos Lanthimosnominated for 11 Oscars (he was also nominated for 11 BAFTAs, the British awards, where he won five).

Bella Baxter, the heroine of the film played by Emma Stone, he doesn’t seem to hear it. She is fascinated by the rhythmic sound of the orchestra serenading the dinner guests. As if possessed, she follows the rhythm to the dance floor, where she unleashes a joyous, primitive and sublimely crazy dance that becomes one of the cinematic moments of the year.

For Constance Macras, the film’s choreographer, that scene was more than just fun. “It’s a relationship-defining moment,” explains Macras, Argentinian, 53 years old, resident in Berlin.

“It’s the moment where he starts to break free from Duncan,” says Constanza Macras, referring to Stone’s character. a woman revived with the brain of her unborn daughter. Duncan took her around the world hoping to get her drunk.

However, he realizes it He can’t keep up with her either in the bedroom or, as the scene in question reveals, on the dance floor.. When Duncan also gets up, he attempts to save the day and assert control over him. “He tries to contain her, he tries to teach her to dance normally,” explains Macras.

“Their entire relationship is contained in that dance,” Ruffalo, who received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for the role, wrote in an email. “And it’s incredibly fun and entertaining.”

A scene that required a lot of rehearsal

Although meticulously rehearsed, the dance scene is present poor creatures It emits an old-fashioned, anarchic energy that makes the moment feel spontaneous. Macras has worked with Lanthimos before In The favourite (2018), also starring Stone.

Constanza Macras’ contributions to that film included a court dance for Rachel Weisz AND Joe Alwyn and a playful fight in the woods for Stone and Alwyn.

“The beautiful thing about Yorgos is this dance is a key moment in his films. It has a very strong dramatic impact on the film itself,” explains Macras.

“For me, he uses dance in one of the most meaningful and intelligent ways I’ve ever seen in cinema,” Macras continued, pointing to other moments in Lanthimos’ films where dance plays a crucial and memorable rolelike the silent disco in the forest Lobster (2015) and the climactic ballroom scene Canine (2009), the director’s great international success.

He also stages an opera

Macras spoke to me the morning after the premiere of his production Carmen at the Basel Theater (Switzerland). Like Belle, the heroine of Bizet’s opera refuses to be controlled by men.

In Macras’ staging of the classic play, Carmen is not a seductive, man-eating vampire, but rather an activist championing the cause of women’s emancipation.

The production includes allusions to Fritz Lang’s German Expressionist classic, Metropolis, American western films, circus elements and lots of dancing, both from the singers and from the members of their Berlin company, DorkyPark. He bears the unmistakable artistic signature of Macras, who loves to combine high and low references.

“I work a lot with quotes. I use dance as a function, as a language. I use music and text”, he explains, speaking of his integrated approach to dance and theatre.

Lanthimos, who closely follows contemporary artists of many disciplines, is an admirer of their work. The director, who could not be reached for comment, said in a 2018 interview with IndieWire that he was inspired by “dance, theater and all that kind of stuff.”

“I knew that physicality would be very important to create the film in a way that felt like a world of its own,” he said later in the interview about choosing Constanza Macras to work with him on The favourite.

Benedikt von Peter, artistic director of Theater Basel, proposed that Macras do so Carmen after reflecting that comic opera, the genre in which Bizet worked, was revue-based entertainment. “I thought, ‘There she is!’” von Peter recalls.

“It mixes political speeches with funny mannerisms and dancing,” he continued, adding that he somehow expected Macras, whose CV doesn’t include much opera, to reject such a popular title. But he remembered that Macras surprised him by accepting. “He said, ‘Yes, I like pop.’ Because when it comes to opera, there’s nothing more pop than Carmen‘”.

In all of his work, both on stage and on screen, Macras has said his goal is to create a “space where the performer can make something that feels like that material is theirs, because otherwise it feels mechanical and strange “.

The preview with Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo

Before filming, the choreographer and two of her dancers rehearsed intensively with Stone and Ruffalo. Ruffalo says Macras came up with a well-crafted version of the dance, which then evolved during the rehearsal process.

“From there we started playing with her and collaborating,” he explains. “Yorgos pointed out that one part didn’t feel right and then we all started trying other things to get a result he liked,” he continued.

“In the end, what Yorgos I was looking for a structure where we could be free. I wanted the relationship to be physical. “It was really a fantastic collaboration with Constanza and her colleagues,” she said.

Macras also worked with Stone and Ruffalo in the crazy brawl that broke out shortly after the dance, when Duncan confronts a handsome older gentleman who winks (winks, to be precise) at Bella. The fight seems fueled by the manic energy unleashed by Bella’s wild dancing.

“He likes to dance. He also likes to be slapped,” laughs Robbie Ryan, the film’s BAFTA- and Oscar-nominated cinematographer.

On a video call from Edinburgh (Scotland), where he is shooting a new film, described Macras as an open and creative personand said that his sensibility fits well with Lanthimos’ approach, which is artistically serious but also embraces absurdity and even stupidity.

“Obviously, their style is in the name DorkyPark,” said Ryan, who also filmed The favourite.

“It’s always kind of like, not silly, but it’s definitely an interesting take on regular contemporary dance and she really pushes the boundaries in a way that’s almost fun,” she said. “I think it fits Yorgos’ sensibility,” she added.

Macras said he believes choreographing for the screen gives you something “that you never get in the theater.” Of course cinematography plays a fundamental role. “Even the camera is truly a choreographic work“He explained.

Ryan said that when it came time to shoot the dance scene, the actors’ preparation made their job reasonably easy. “We found a way to dance around them,” she said, adding, “I was worried about hitting them all the time, but we negotiated.”

However, things got tougher in the fight. Ryan shot the scene handheld and, at one point, Stone hit the camera lens with his boot.

Luckily no one got hurt. For Ruffalo, working with Macras allowed him to discover a different side of himself as an artist.. “I realized that I can dance and that I can do physical comedy in a funny but also honest way,” she said.