"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 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.
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. (Chloe Veltman)
