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Within Outer Spaces
festival.scotsman.com
Aug. 21, 2001
Rating: 4 stars
Capacitor have been rapidly gaining an enviable reputation in their San Francisco Bay area home over the past four years. Their heady mix of technology, movement along with a distinctly mechanical take on the functioning of the human body (what William Burroughs referred to as the soft machine) has proved irresistible to audiences.
Their growing stature and confidence has now started to see them stretch their wings beyond American shores. This year, just prior to its Fringe run, the company was showing Within Outer Spaces in Malaysia.
The show itself is a take on planetary evolution and the development of life. As such there are a lot of areas where the show could have dipped into ponderous self-indulgence with their impressive array of high tech gizmos and doohikeys. Luckily, they approach what they do with a light enough touch to keep them away from the edge. The whole is delivered with a soundtrack that sounds like a cross between a badly tuned radio and the messy intestinal aftermath of a digital curry.
The routines are impressive as they explore the elemental collisions that
lead to life, and the resulting complexities of lifeforms relating to each
other: mating, bonding, territorialism... Capacitor are clearly developing
a rich crossover of dance and technology skills and will be a name to look
out for in the coming years. (Michael Begg)
