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Capacitor:
A universe resounding, quirks and all
November 3, 2003
The Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY
With venerable names like Twyla Tharp and Dance Theatre of Harlem popping
up all over the place, it was getting a bit difficult to discern what is "new"
in the Kentucky Center's New Directions in Dance Series for the current season.
Capacitor, however, fulfills the series' mandate in terms that may not be
to all patrons' liking but that strides confidently on the keen edge of movement
technology.
The San Francisco-based company brought its 2000 piece, "Within Outer
Spaces," to the Brown Theatre on Saturday evening. It's cosmology, according
to artistic director Jodi Lomask, a few billion years' worth of Earth's migration
from cosmic concept to the big ball we know and love. In her deliberate fashion,
drawing on consensus science plus her own quirky sense of time, place and
possibility, she revels both in order and disorder.
"Within Outer Spaces" draws on the diverse talents of seven performers,
who occupy the stage in front of a large screen awash with projected images.
Lomask's ensemble doesn't look like a conventional dance company — at
least not most of the time, anyway. You're just as apt to see juggling, trampoline-like
bouncing, acrobatics: a veritable street scene of multipurpose artists, all
of whom seem utterly devoted to Lomask's cause.
Expanding on territory celebrated by such companies as Polobolus, Momix and
in a few sequences, Mummenschanz, Capacitor celebrates physicality very much
in the foreground of its expressive purpose. There was an elemental strength
on display Saturday, especially among the women. Mutual stamina was severely
tested, and the entire ensemble responded with apparent ease.
