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Absolutearts.com
May 16 & 17 2001
Avatars is Capacitor’s newest, fresh fusion of dance, martial arts and
circus. With over twenty performing and visual artists mixing it up under
the artistic direction of choreographer Jodi Lomask, Avatars juxtaposes sound,
movement, animation, video, whimsical costumes and new rigging designs. Seven
Capacitor performers, six motion capture animators, a film director, two sound
composers, two riggers, a costume designer, special effects and lighting designers,
and two sculptors pack a punch in Capacitor’s new work.
Avatars features new, intense visuals. House of Moves put together a team
of motion capture artists to create animations of the live performers in Avatars.
Featured Capacitor dancers visited the House of Moves studio in Los Angeles
where motion capture artist Josh Ochoa headed a team that recorded the performers’
movement sequences. These sequences were then transformed into animations
that audiences will see in action during the performance.
Capacitor’s prominent use of props added an extra dimension to the motion
capture project, requiring Ochoa to record the motion of both humans and objects
at the same time. Ochoa explains, “The juggler performs with three props,
all of which are being tracked at 120 frames per second.” Jarrod Phillips,
House of Moves vice-president of sales and marketing adds, “This project
includes some of the most aggressive prop moves ever captured.”
Josh Callaghan rounds out the visual component of Avatars with several short
films that draw out the major themes of the show. Callaghan’s films
have been screened nationally and internationally, including Straight Outta
Hunters Point, an award-winning documentary about an embattled San Francisco
Public Housing Project and Modern Transportation in Nepal, a Fulbright Fellowship
funded video that follows objects traveling from source to destination in
the Himalayan Kingdom.
Along with co-founders Jodi Lomask and Zack Bernstein, Avatars features a
cast of diverse and phenomenal performers including dancer/staff artist Alexander
Zendzian, Afro-brazilian capoerista Lindell Dixon, dancer Jaime Duggan, aerialist
Jocelynn Rudig, and Chih-Ting Shih, an Oakland Ballet dancer who appears as
a special guest and brings her extensive background in Chinese folk dance
to the production.
