Biome, 2007
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A corporal, visual and audio exploration of desire and yearning in the forest canopy.
A dancer unfurls herself towards the Sun, capturing with uncanny precision the jerky grace of a plant in a time-lapse movie. Another creeps, vine-like, up a huge tree; yet more lithe bodies cram themselves into a hollow trunk, like a colony of fungal parasites.
Nature Magazine
The message of environmental preservation was clear.... to show the conections shared by all living organisms in nature, including humans.- US Embassy, El Salvador
a reverie on nature's communion with itself and our interconnectedness to a fragile ecosystem. - The Village Voice
explores the relationship between the leafy canopy above and the world below...enlightening and entertaining" - San Francisco Magazine
The end result is an elegant tangle of athletic modern and aerial dance, film, fashion design, and metalwork. Dancers in costumes that somehow integrate water, ribbon, and light morph into plants and animals with the use of interactive props.
Bonner Odell - SF Weekly
One forest ecologist's got a great idea: mix practicing scientists with artists and generate that much more data.
Anne Casselman - Inkling Magazine
Every so often I would catch sight of Lomask dangling from virgin Douglas-firs on a rope the width of my thumb, gracefully building the movement lexicon for “biome.”
Anne Casselman - Inkling Magazine
Every so often I would catch sight of Lomask dangling from virgin Douglas-firs on a rope the width of my thumb, gracefully building the movement lexicon for “biome.”
La Danza Verde se presenta en San Salvador
Carlos Chavez - La Prensa
Breve de Cultura
Capacitor's biome
The collaborating artists of Capacitor have been creating dance fusion performance experiences in collaboration with scientists since 2000 in San Francisco. Through the ‘biome’ project, we are exploring the cooperation and communication which occurs between different species in nature. Our show gives audiences a corporal, visual, and audio experience of the great interconnected web within the forest. To achieve this, we focus specifically on the cloud forest of Costa Rica where we engaged in a creative retreat in 2006. The dancers and choreographer met regularly with local researchers who are studying the canopy and the wildlife that interacts there. We use critical scientific information as a portal through which we can connect more deeply with the spirit and poetry of the forest. Besides being a great art work, our show encourages a sense of preciousness and mystery around wild spaces in nature – and potentially a resounding commitment to preservation.
Lead Scientific Adviser
Dr. Nalini Nadkarni Dubbed "The Queen of the Forest Canopy," Dr. Nalini Nadkarni is a pioneer in forest canopy studies and communicating the biodiversity of canopy research among scientists and the worldwide public.
Dr. Nalini Nadkarni is a Professor of Biology at the University of Utah. She is also the Director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education. She received her undergraduate degree in Biology from Brown University (1976) and her PhD in Forest Ecology from the University of Washington (1983). Her research is focused on the ecology of tropical and temperate forest canopies, particularly the role that canopy-dwelling plants play in forests at the ecosystem level. She carries out field research in Washington State and in Monteverde, Costa Rica with the support of the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. She has published three books and over 90 articles in scientific journals. Nalini is on the Speakers Bureau of the National Geographic Society, and has presented many endowed lectures at academic institutions around the world. She spoke at TED2009.
Dr. Nalini Nadkarni is a Professor of Biology at the University of Utah. She is also the Director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education. She received her undergraduate degree in Biology from Brown University (1976) and her PhD in Forest Ecology from the University of Washington (1983). Her research is focused on the ecology of tropical and temperate forest canopies, particularly the role that canopy-dwelling plants play in forests at the ecosystem level. She carries out field research in Washington State and in Monteverde, Costa Rica with the support of the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. She has published three books and over 90 articles in scientific journals. Nalini is on the Speakers Bureau of the National Geographic Society, and has presented many endowed lectures at academic institutions around the world. She spoke at TED2009.
In 1994, she co-founded the International Canopy Network, a non-profit organization that fosters communication among researchers, educators, and conservationists concerned with forest canopies. She engages the public on matters concerning forest canopies and forest conservation. She has appeared in numerous television documentaries, and was featured in the National Geographic television special on tropical forest canopies, titled "Heroes of the High Frontier", which won the Emmy Award for Best Documentary Film of 2001. In 2001, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue her interests in communication of forest canopy research results to non-scientists with collaborations of artists, musicians, physicians, sports figures, and religious leaders.
Sound Director
Michael Ferriell Zbyszynski is a composer, sound artist, performer, and teacher in the field of contemporary electroacoustic music. Currently, he is Assistant Director of Music Composition and Pedagogy at UC Berkeley's Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. Playing flute, saxophones, clarinet, Yamaha WX-7, live electronics, or things made from coffee cans and PVC, he has appeared with Roscoe Mitchell, Myra Melford, the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, at the Other Minds Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival, the Getty Center, and the Montréal Jazz Festival, and is looking forward to a residency at the Montalvo Arts Center. He holds a PhD in composition from the University of California, Berkeley and studied at the Academy of Music in Cracow, Poland, on a Fulbright Grant. He has taught at the Universities of California Berkeley and Irvine, Berklee College of Music, and Northeastern University, and can be heard on the ARTSHIP recording label.
Video Director
As a new media artist, Nate Pagel uses video, sound, graphics, the web, virtual reality and other interactive technologies in his work. He specializes in video production, effects, lighting and stage design, and collaborates with choreographers, composers, video artists and designers to create theatrical performances, installation work and works for live audiences, DVD and the Web. Pagel's artwork has been shown in nineteen countries,
including the SFMOMA (Tokyo Metro, 2006) and Yerba Buena Center (2007), and broadcast in Italy, Australia and the US. In 2004, he taught classes for the Institute for Digital and Performing Arts in San Jose, Costa Rica. The culmination of these classes was a staged performance, incorporating video shot of the rainforest, that was featured on the front page of the national newspaper, La Nacion, as well as on all major TV news networks. In 2005, Pagel was commissioned by the Natural World Museum and the United Nations to create an immersive rainforest experience using HD video shot in the Corcovado Rainforest of Costa Rica. The dome experience itself was a 7 projector, 15 meter dome with surrond sound in view at the Festival Pavilion Hall at Fort Mason in San Francisco during the United Nations Environment Programme's World Environment Day. Over 10,000 people were able to experience RAINFOREST. He was also commissioned to photograph the rainforests of El Salvador in 2005 for the Rianforest Alliance and Salva Natura.
Costume Designer
Kimie Sako of Verrieres & Sako has designed and made all of the costumes for the past three Capacitor shows.
She earned her associateʼs degree in fashion design from the San Francisco Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandise. Kimieʼs fusion of classic sharp tailoring, fabric manipulation, and inventive design reflects her enduring aspirations to create collections renowned for their impeccable sophistication and unparalleled uniqueness.
Filmmaker
Amy Harrison is a San Francisco-based artist who has more than ten years experience making award-winning short films and videos on personal and political subjects. Her first film was a documentary on an art activist group called the Guerrilla Girls, and she has gone on to win many grants and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a grant from the UC Institute for Research in the Arts. Her current video work explores the intersection of autobiography and landscape, and is the result of her musings on "deep time" and the nuclear legacy of the Cold War.
Camera
After art school (SMFA) in Boston, MA, Daniel Zox worked with award-winning filmmaker Abigail Child and has since developed dance videos with Capacitor and Raizel Performances. In 2006 his gender tearing short, Warrior, screened to an enthusiastic crowd at the Chicago International REEL Shorts Film Festival. Recently Zox has worked on music videos for glitch-hop artists Yea Big and Kid Static and indie band Le Concorde. His dance/music video hybrid, I Am Only Waiting, screened at the Provincetown International Film Festival, infusing a program of narrative films with a jolt of rock and modern-dance choreography. Zox currently resides in Chicago.
Sound Editor
Roberto Salvatore specializes in Sound Design and Sound Post Production. He works in Film and Television, with Media Artists and Animators, Dance and Theatre Groups, Cultural Institutions and in the Corporate sector. Recent works Roberto sound designed have been included in Film Festivals and Arts Festivals globally. Most recently “Dugong” has been nominated for an AFI Award (Australian Film Institute Awards), “Living in the
Dark” and “Sukki’s Story” won the Silver Award at the 12th Hong Kong Independent Short Film Awards and “Still Waiting2” was exhibited at New Crowned Hope Festival - Vienna, Austria. Roberto worked at Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), in Melbourne - from 2002 to 2007 in Content Development and AV Services. He is about to take residency and suite at SoundWaves - an award winning Post Production facility in Melbourne, Australia. Roberto graduated with distinction from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (R.M.I.T.) in December 2000 - Media Arts and is invigorated when working on projects based on the other side of the planet, as he believes he’s a good swimmer.