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SHIFT
Magazine
November 2002
Canada
#63 of 75 People, Places, Things that will make
you happy
It's a dance performance. It's a videogame. It's both! About a million blocks
from the ballet and the opera house, veer into San Francisco's less-than-polished
South of Market area and you'll find the tech-fueled, intense, innovative
artistry of Capacitor.
They've been expressing themselves in offbeatbars and clubs since 1998, but
their most recent piece, Avatars, has put the group on the multimedia and
modern dance maps. Much like the characters of action fighting games such
as Mortal Kombat or Tekken, the dancers take on martial-arts personas and
artfully, beautifully, heroically, battle it out on stage. Capacitor also
weaves in an element of high production that you won't find at Swan Lake:
They integrate motion capture imagery in the their performance, projecting
animations of the dancers on a giant screen behind the live action.
"Our these focus on how technology enters our lives," says Jodi
Lomask, choreographer and artistic director of the group. "We're looking
for how technological innovation is changing the way humans feel on Earth."
Though artistic expression is certainly a part of the piece, the spectacle
is key. Avatars is exciting, action-packed and drenched in the high speed
that attracts many players to the videogame console. Says Lomask, "I
don't think we've tapped the ballet crowd, to be honest. Our crowd is in the
their twenties and thirties, with some exposure to technology. They don't
go to traditional dance shows because they think it will be boring. We're
more sensitive to the audience's experience." She smiles, adding, "There's
a lot to look at."
(Karen Solomon)
