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Down to a Science
Capacitor brings a body of principles to dance
5 March 2003

Capacitor performs Avatars

In recent months, a bunch of geophysicists and geologists have taken to hanging around a dance studio in downtown Oakland. Brandishing books with titles like Seismic Data Processing and Earth: Portrait of a Planet, the scientists have been sharing their enthusiasm for studying the micromovements of tectonic plates with an eager crowd of ballerinas, modern dancers, capoeristas, jugglers, and aerialists.

One early January evening the conversation erupts in erratic directions. In an environment where a description of the geological framework underlying Japan's Osaka airport casually segues into ruminations on how to install revolving restaurant-style seating in a theater, it feels like anything is possible. Still, there's little indication that these ravings will eventually cohere into a work of art.

Ever since the Bay Area-based multidisciplinary performance group Capacitor began work on Within Outer Spaces, a show about the relationship between humans and the universe, scientists and technologists have been welcomed into the creative process. Choreographer and dancer Jodi Lomask and juggler Zack Bernstein founded the company in 1997, with a mandate to create work exploring the impact of science and technology on daily life. When Lomask, Capacitor's artistic director, decided she wanted to create a show about outer space a few years ago, she contacted some local astronomers and invited them over to the company's Oakland studio for a conversation.

Thanks to that initial meeting, the Capacitor Lab came into being. Conceived as a forum for artists and scientists to exchange ideas, the labs have been a formal part of the development of every Capacitor show since. "Generally, dancers have a limited knowledge about science and technology," says Lomask, 28, whose training includes the Merce Cunningham Studio, the London Contemporary Dance School, and the Rotterdam Dansacademie. "We don't want to create the same show over and over again. So the Lab gives us fresh perspectives."

Capacitor is currently developing a new work, tentatively titled Forming Continents, which will mine geological and geophysical nature. Meanwhile, Avatars, an ambitious production combining concepts taken from computer games and the five Chinese elements (earth, fire, water, metal, and wood), is being reworked in preparation for performances at San Francisco's Cowell Theater Fri/7 and Sat/8. Avatars improbably melds motion-capture technology, aerial acrobatics, martial arts, fire juggling, classical ballet, modern dance, a throbbing industrial score, and a wardrobe of kinky leather-and-red-satin outfits. The result is a captivating spectacle about humans' ability to transcend themselves through fantasy.

A capacitor is an electronic device that stores electric charge; when triggered, it releases a burst of current. In rehearsal and performance, the company is similar to its namesake. Like all Capacitor shows, Avatars and Forming Continents present a counterpoint between tender rest and frenetic motion. The dreamy, quasi-mystical opening and closing scenes of Avatars are balanced against the violent convulsions of the Chinese element Wood as she is starved of oxygen and the hysterical flailings of Water, trapped midair in a nightmarish spider's web. Forming Continents places serene aerial acrobatics next to high-contact duets in which the performers collide with sumo wrestler force. Unlike sumo wrestlers, though, there's very little natural padding on any of the sinewy dancers.

Bruising is commonplace. Lomask's extreme approach to choreography and the tight rehearsal conditions of the company's Oakland studio make watching a Capacitor rehearsal feel like being inside a bottle of champagne as it's being vigorously shaken and about to explode. When Lomask and performer Alex Zendzian were rehearsing sequences from Forming Continents recently, the two went at it so hard that they ended up toppling over and plowing into the walls. Performer Lindell Dixon once knocked out a front tooth while doing a back flip. Torches have singed the eyebrows of cast members.

Given the company's penchant for risk-laden paraphernalia – fire helmets, cages, ropes, and aerial rigging – safety is, unsurprisingly, a central issue for Walter Holden, Capacitor's technical director. Holden's relationship with Lomask is a delicate pas de deux between realizing the artistic director's often technically complex dreams and preventing dancers from falling from great heights or setting fire to the set. "Jodi is one of the most tenacious people I've ever met," Holden says. "When she gets an idea into her head, she won't let go. It's not easy telling Jodi that something she wants to do isn't safe. There's a personal conflict between looking at a situation from an artistic point of view and looking at it from a safety point of view."

When Lomask and Bernstein first met, at a party on Ocean Beach in 1997, they knew they wanted to create work for people who don't normally go to the theater. Avatars, which was first performed last year at the DNA Lounge and the now defunct King Street Garage, is the latest Capacitor show to find a home in clubland, rather than behind the traditional proscenium. "The idea of Capacitor was to create a new kind of nightlife – an alternative to theater, films, and clubs," says Bernstein, 27, a Bay Area native who apprenticed in a children's circus as a teenager before honing his juggling skills on street corners in northern Europe. "Young people don't go to the theater," Lomask adds. "I decided that if young people wouldn't come to the work, I would bring the work to them."

Capacitor has subsequently performed in several San Francisco nightspots, as well as at Burning Man. Despite the popularity of their club appearances, the relationship between Capacitor and these venues has not yet been cemented. Performing a couple of six-minute acrobatic "crowd pleasers" (as the company has previously done at the DNA Lounge) is one thing, but persuading clubbers who usually arrive at midnight to turn up earlier for an hour-long theatrical extravaganza is another. "Jodi is breaking down barriers by performing at venues which clubbers know," DNA manager Barry Synoground says. "But clubbers don't show up at 8 p.m. It's a lot easier to get the performance crowd to stay late than getting clubbers to come early."

Capacitor has adapted to a variety of environments. The company seems at home whether it's performing at clubs, theaters, the Webby Awards, or a Volvo promotion event in Malaysia. The mutable nature of Capacitor has influenced the way outsiders view it. How to describe this tangled cyborg of a performance group? The combination of dance, theater, circus, and martial arts elements puts the company in a niche spot, sometimes defined as "fusion performance" or "other" on grant application forms. This can be positive, as groups that can't be easily categorized tend to stand out.

But there are drawbacks. Invariably, Capacitor ends up being compared to other companies that fuse different arts, such as the Blue Man Group and De La Guarda. Khan Wong, operation and programs associate at Grants for the Arts, a San Francisco funding body that supports Capacitor, calls the company "a lower-budget Blue Man Group with more intellectually challenging content." That is one way of labeling the group, whose richly visceral work has lately been informed by Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra and Freud's topographical model for human consciousness. However, the company has also recently been described (by a local newspaper reviewer) as a "low-tech version of Cirque du Soleil," which is less diplomatic.

Back at the Capacitor Lab, the geo experts have been providing information about rock cycles, volcanic eruptions, and the recycling of sedimentary rock, which Lomask and her cohorts then translate into physical movement. Currently, the performers are exploring "shakes" – aggressive movements modeled after tremors and earthquakes – and "slow change," motion that mimics the gradual movement of tectonic plates. A sound score is being developed using algorithms for manipulating mock geophysical data.

Capacitor's considerable ambitions contain potential pitfalls. For one thing, there's the danger of stuffing so many scientific ideas into a work of art that the audience gets lost down a black hole of impenetrable theories and esoteric data. Ideally, scientists invited into the labs are there to monitor the relationship between science and art. "The challenge is in trying to provide both a technical perspective and to prevent too great a cognitive dissonance between the art and the technology it is using and attempting to represent," says David Hirschfield, an Industrial Light and Magic specialist who participated in the Avatars labs.

But sometimes Capacitor's work can be tricky to grasp, the narrative flow shadowed by the glare of gorgeously executed concepts. "Narrative is not Capacitor's strong point, and a search for a story line is best avoided," one reviewer commented during Within Outer Spaces' run at the Edinburgh Festival in 2001.
Science is undeniably an integral part of Capacitor's work. This stems partly from Lomask's upbringing as a scientist's daughter – a typical family vacation involved visiting Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology conferences. It also is related to life in the tech-centric Bay Area. Ultimately, Lomask believes the work she produces should always be relevant to her surroundings. "It is the artist's duty to be present in his or her environment and reflect what's happening around them," she says. "If I was in Kansas, I would probably be making shows about corn."

Somehow it's impossible to imagine Lomask do-si-do-ing in the hay fields of the Midwest. As the cast of Avatars whoosh across the DNA stage, performing stylized roundhouse kicks to sleekly rendered motion-capture projections and pumping garage music, there's little doubt about where this choreographer-dancer belongs.