RJ Muna Photography

Interview from 2011

JODI LOMASK
Artistic Director

Jodi Lomask's work comes from a desire to elicit a specific feeling in the audience or performer with her choreography and sculptures. The daughter of a biomedical research inventor/ physicist and a painter/ sculptor, Lomask spent her childhood going to laboratories and gallery openings. She weaves these two worlds into the tapestry of her work, creating highly visual, biological images and rhythms. She is an entrepreneur, sculptor, director, producer, choreographer, and environmentalist.

Since founding Capacitor in 1997, Lomask has choreographed and designed all the dances and choreography in Capacitor’s ten full-evening shows with the help of complex teams of scientists, new technologists, dancers, circus performers, martial artists, composers, and costume designers. Under her artistic direction, Capacitor created works that tackle the past and future of reproduction (futurespecies 2000), Earth's place in the Universe (Within Outer Spaces 2001), the hero’s journey in video games (Avatars 2002), the deep Earth (Digging in the Dark 2004), forest symbiosis (biome 2007), flower reproduction (The Perfect Flower 2009), the ocean's vital forces (Okeanos 2012), creativity in the mind (Synaptic Motion 2014), early childhood (When We Were Small 2016), and 20 years of sculpture in motion (Left To Her Own Devices 2018).

Lomask designs movement structures out of steel, bungee, fiberglass, and wood. Her choreography unites unique characters, and original motion sculpture, with articulated movement vocabularies for Capacitor's signature synthesis of visual magic and raw athleticism. Defined by a sculptural approach to the body, costuming, and props, her inventive choreographic solutions emerge from problems born of conceptual, physical, and spatial parameters.

Her events, talks, and panel discussions help people to tackle practical, critical issues. She has produced over a hundred events and has contributed creatively to many more. She has toured as a public speaker due to her ability to effectively bring scientists, technologists, and creatives together to achieve shared goals.

Lomask has created for Disney's World Showcase and Future World and consults for IDEO. She has been commissioned to create original works for Apple, NASA, TED, SFO, the Discovery Channel, Computers and Structures, the California Academy of Sciences, The Crucible, and the Salvadorian Olympic Gymnastics Team. She helped launch the Volvo S60 in Malaysia, a new line of activewear with Athleta, and celebrate the mapping of the human genome with Celera. She directed a VR180 stereoscopic immersive film with Adobe, produced by the SF Dance Film Festival.

Her work has been covered by Nature Magazine, The Smithsonian Magazine, Fast Company, Wired.com, Res Magazine, SHIFT Magazine, NBC 11’s Tech NOW!, CNET Radio, TECH TV, NPR, Dance Magazine, San Francisco Magazine, The New York Times, among other media outlets. She appeared in National Geographic's 'Wild Chronicles' with canopy tree ecologist Dr. Nalini Nadkarni in 2007 and Discovery Channels 'Through the Worm Hole' with Morgan Freeman.

She has been in residence at the UCSF Neuroscape Lab, Yaddo Artist Colony, Djerassi Artist Colony, CounterPulse, the Lab, and SHACK15. In 2021, she embarked on an artist residency at The Kennedy Center in DC , working with students from Gallaudet University’s TinkerLab. She is currently the 2023 Osher Fellow at the California Academy of Sciences where she is premiering a new motion sculpture Pollination.

Awards

  • Unlikely Collaborators, SPARK 2025

  • San Francisco Lawyers for the Arts 2024

  • The Bernard Osher Foundation 2023

  • New England Foundation for the Arts 2022

  • California Arts Council, 2002, 2003, 2021, 2022, 2023

  • Center for Cultural Innovation & City of Berkeley 2022

  • The Kennedy Center Office Hours Residency 2021

  • Dance Camera Istanbul 2021

  • SCINEMA International Science Film Festival 2021 - Official Selection

  • San Francisco Dance Film Festival - CoLab Adobe Residency 2019

  • California Relief Grant 2021

  • Phyllis C Wattis Foundation 2019, 2020, 2022

  • Fleishhacker Foundation 2019

  • Isadora Duncan Award for Sustained Achievement 2019

  • NEA, 2013, 2014, 2019, 2021, 2023

  • SF Grants for the Arts, 2000-2024

  • SF Arts Commission Grant, 2013 & 2014

  • Kenneth Rainin Foundation, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2022

  • Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, 2013-2019, 2022

  • Neuroscape Lab Resident Artist, UCSF 2013-2019

  • Zellerbach Family Fund, 1998-2018

  • Voluntary Arts Contribution Fund, 2012 & 2013

  • CounterPulse AIR 2015

  • The McElwee Family Fellowship, 2014

  • The Dale Djerassi Fellowship, 2008

  • Altria Group, 2007 & 2008

  • Toyota's Together Green, 2008

  • Djerassi Artist Colony, 2008 & 2014

  • Yaddo Artist Colony, 2005 & 2006

  • CHIME Mentorship with Joanna Haigood, 2003

  • LEF, 2002

  • American Composers' Forum, 2000

  • Theater Bay Area, 1999

Talks

  • Monaco Dance Forum 2002 & 2004

  • Ecological Society of America Conference 2007

  • American Physical Society 2010

  • CUNY Communicating Science through the Performing Arts 2010

  • BLUEMiND Summit at CAS 2011

  • Dance USA’s 20/20 Vision Series 2012

  • Bay Area Science Festival 2012

  • Turtle Island Restoration Network, Marin 2012

  • TEDxBerkeley, Zellerbach Hall 2012

  • Black Hills State University, SD 2012

  • The Dahl Arts Center, Rapid City, SD 2012

  • TEDxBRC 2012

  • Pepsico Executive Retreat, SF 2012

  • The Hive 2013

  • Athleta Design Retreat, SF 2013

  • Science and Literature Conference, U of Utah 2014

  • Project Commotion 2014

  • BLUEMiND Book Launch 2014

  • The Battery 2014

  • Zendesk 2015

  • Dorkbot 2016

  • EcoArts Australis 2016

  • American Museum of Natural History 2018

  • Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 2018

  • Djerassi Forever 2018

  • The Battery 2019

  • SF Dance Film Festival VR 2019

  • Djerassi Forever 2020

  • Museum of Dance VR Panel 2020

  • Y-Exchange 2020

  • Tektite 2020 - Women of Sea and Space

  • LocalLove - MusePop 2020

  • Creatics 2020

  • Choreographers and Coffee 2020

  • Museum of Dance Podcast 2022

  • Stanford Psychedelic Science Group 2023

  • SHACK15 2023

  • Burning Man, Center Camp 2023

  • Capacitor Lab, Cesar Chavez Studios 2023

  • Society of the Neuroscience of Creativity 2024

  • Chacruna Culture and Psychedelics 2024

 

Background

A 1996 cum laude graduate of the arts conservatory at SUNY Purchase, Lomask has trained at the Royal Ballet Academy, Merce Cunningham Studio, London Contemporary Dance School, the Rotterdam Dansacademie, L' Espace Catastrophe, and Jacob's Pillow. She has performed with Project Bandaloop, Kneejerk, Erica Essner Performance Co-op, Zaccho Dance Theatre, and Capacitor and has taught workshops and classes in modern dance technique, composition, and collaboration at universities across the United States.