David Finkelstein & Cassie Terman

CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) Presents an evening of live improvised theatre and improvisation-based video created by David Finkelstein of Lake Ivan Performance Group. Two recent works will be screened: "Display Devices" (featuring James Martin) and "Terrifying Blankess" (featuring Cassie Terman). Preceding the screenings, Finkelstein and Terman, along with Emmy-nominate musician Steve Sandberg (David Byrne, Ruben Blades), will demonstrate the beginnings of the improvisational process used in the films. After the screenings, you are invited to stay for a glass of wine and an informal discussion with the artists.

A second program of videos with live performance by Finkelstein, Ian W Hill, and Sandberg, will be presented on Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 8 pm.

Finkelstein's videos are founded on the improvising actor's art of spontaneously creating poetic and evocative texts. The groundwork involves videotaping two actors, gesturing and tossing brief monologues back and forth, creating a picaresque dreamscape. Back at his computer, Finkelstein modulates and mutates the footage through elaborate video wizardry. The work has won awards at several film festivals and is available as single channel DVD releases. 

Finkelstein has been making performances since 1982. His video work has been featured in the Brick Theater, Brainwash Film Festival, Experiments in Cinema, CRS New York, Outer Film Fest, Artist Television Access, Free Form Film Festival, Ybor Festival, Rubric Video, WRO (Poland) Festival, New Vision Cinema, Athens (Ohio) Film Fest, Dahlonega Film Festival, VideoBardo, Exground, Valleyfest, Big MiniDV Festival, Park City Film Music Festival, the Puget Sound Cinema Society, the Downstream Film Festival, the Silver Lake Festival, EXP2, New Filmmakers, Bearded Child Festival, X-Fest, SinCiné, and the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema. Altogether, his video works have won nine awards at four different Festivals, including the Grand Festival Award from the Berkeley Video and Film Festival for "Born in Mid-Flight" and "Best of Festival: Experimental" from the Brooklyn Arts Council Film Festival for "Earth and Moon in Love." He has been commissioned three times to create videos for the Outmusic Awards, and these videos were subsequently shown on the PrideVision cable network and the PBS series "Under the Pink Carpet." His work has been funded by The Fund for Creative Communities, The Field, Movement Research, Meet the Composer, The Brooklyn Arts Exchange, BACA, and other sources..

Emmy-nominated composer Steve Sandberg currently scores "Dora the Explorer" and "Go Diego Go" for Nickelodeon/CBS. He recently wrote the music for "Climbing Miss Sophie," which had its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. He has toured with David Byrne, Ruben Blades, and Bebel Gilberto. His current solo concerts, "Chants, Songs and Musical Landscapes," highly influenced by his studies of North Indian raga singing in the Sufi lineage of Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan, are improvised shamanistic sound journeys that have been described as "music from a country i've always wanted to go to but never found". He has presented them at the Knitting Factory, the Guggenheim Museum and the Petit Versailles Garden in NYC.

Cassie Terman is a performer, writer, and teacher. Raised in California she arrived to theater in her early twenties by way of dance. Originally trained in ballet and modern technique she began an intensive practice in Action Theater™ with Ruth Zaporah in 1991 and since then has been improvising and creating original physical theater work on stages from San Francisco to Berlin. Fascination with language led to an MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University, a small Buddhist college, which then influenced her theater work on many levels. In 1999 she became a member of Shinichi Iova-Koga's inkBoat company and was introduced to Butoh dance and a starkly imagistic theater-making that resonated with an ongoing delight in the surreal and darker world of fairytale, myth, and the profoundly mysterious nature of being. Since moving to New York in 2004 she has continued solo performances as well as collaborating with such talented artists as Tanya Calamoneri & Company SoGoNo, composer Keren Rosenbaum's Reflex Ensemble, Heather Harpham, Shinichi Iova-Koga, and the Action Theater Ensemble. Current and past collaborators also include Owen Walker, Sten Rudstrom, Sabine von der Tann, Leigh Evans, Katie Yates, Max Regan, and Etiquette (Mary Lois Hare and Linda Carr).

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