WHEN WE WERE SMALL (2016)
“Dance theater troupe Capacitor brings back the wonderment of childhood...Conceived as a performance installation, the multifaceted show brings audiences face-to-face with Capacitor’s athletic and acrobatic performers, whose surreal motion sculptures offer a glimpse back into that forgotten part of our lives when everything in the world was new, and strange, outsize experiences were the norm. From swaddling to splashing in mud puddles, Capacitor blends the theater of cirque nouveau and the viscerality of modern dance to create moments both playful and nostalgic.”
Explore early sensory discovery in this surreal reflection on childhood. When We Were Small is a performance installation happening in the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture’s new Gallery 308. Capacitor dancers and contortionists escort us back to a time before memory, when simple tasks were puzzling and everyday activities were fantastic.
Artistic Director, Jodi Lomask, has collected a series of movement meditations on the experience of early childhood. She revisits the transformation of growing up; awakening us with an evening full of curiosities that connect us to everyone who was once small.
Integrating poems from the works of AA Milne, award-winning Danish composer Toni Martin Dobrzanski creates a magical score that sends you back in time to when your parents were giants and the world was not fitted to you.
“The outfits, made out of recycled bicycle tires, make the sound of splashing and falling rain when they hit the floor. There will also be a tea party that explores the oddities of learning social rules; 16-foot-tall “dairy queens” to reflect the utter ecstasy of discovering something for the first time (“Right now my kid’s all about butter,” Lomask says); and a 10-year-old contortionist performing on the laps of parent figures seated on seemingly unstable thrones (one for the parents in the room). “My kid is a miniature human,” says Lomask, “and that’s something universal. We all started that way, no matter whom we turn into.””
Toni Martin Dobrzanski's original sound score is now available on USB Card.
The Sponsors
When We Were Small is supported by SF Grants for the Arts / Hotel Tax Fund, The Kenneth Rainin Foundation, San Francisco Art Commission, The Crucible, Facebook, Danish Songwriters Guild, RJ Muna Photography, and Eric Raeber Photography.
