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SF
WEEKLY, SF
Digging It
Even while surrounded by fault lines and periodically moving ground, many
of us in the Bay Area forget about the essential nature of the spinning rock
we call home. But when it comes to an awareness of planetary conditions, the
otherworldly dance group Capacitor is always on the ball. Committed to combining
performance with technology and science, the company has previously produced
projects that have concentrated on everything from genetic evolution, reproduction,
and video-game heroes to relational circuits. Now, in Digging in the Dark,
Capacitor's dancers wrap their arms, legs, and brains around the concept of
earthly layers: the continental crust, the lithosphere (the tectonic plates
beneath the continental crust), the mantle, the outer core, and the inner
core, which here also represent human strength, responsibility, love, ethics,
and spirit.
To Jodi Lomask, the 30-year-old choreographer who leads Capacitor, our planet
and our selves have much in common. "If you dig deep enough into the
Earth, you realize that it's just an energetic force field holding things
together," she says. "And if you go deep enough into a person, it's
the same. All we are is a vibration, a force, an energetic phenomenon."
Digging in the Dark was developed, like all of the company's work, through
the Capacitor Lab, a creative think tank composed of prominent scientists,
engineers, mathematicians, motion-capture animators, and artists who share
ideas and create dances based on scientific principles. The show consists
of two acts: In the first, the performers dive into the Earth to reach the
core; in the second, they climb out. All the while, the layers of the planet
double as metaphors for human qualities and processes.
One dancer maps the Earth as a geophysicist might, by sending sound waves
to another performer, who personifies the planet's response. In this duet,
balls are bounce-juggled on a slab of marble, signaling a sound-sensitive
computer program to digitally uncover sections of a giant map that's projected
above the stage. Lomask compares this piece to a dance between strangers,
suggesting that to truly know one another we must go beyond vision and share
sound or conversation. (continues)
