The CASSANDRA Dialogues
An on-line improv session, on live Internet 2 between Indiana and New York University

Participating forces:

 at NYU:

• Wendy Luck - Voice, Flutes, Narration
• Christine Ghezzo - Ethnic Singer, Narration
• Ron Mazurek - Synth, Sampler
• Tom Beyer - Percussion
• Dinu Ghezzo - Piano, Percussion
  

at Indiana University:

• Jack Gilfoy

Wendy Luck - Voice, Flutes, Narration
Jong-Jin Hong - Bamboo Flutes, Ethnic Korean performer
Christine Ghezzo - Ethnic Singer, Narration
Ron Mazurek - Synth, Sampler
Tom Beyer - Percussion
Dinu Ghezzo - Piano, Percussion

1. Group A (NYU) starts, Group B (INDIANA) reacts. 2 minutes

• Text - Music (NYU), 1 minute
• Music - Text (Indiana), 1 minute, with NYU accomp.

2. Free interplay between groups, 2 minutes

• The Korean Cassandra, the Romanian Cassandra, with masks from the two countries determining the style of Imporv.

3. Korean Solo in NY, Perc. accomp. in Indiana, 1 minute

4. Followup improv, 2 minutes

• determined by the Solo Korean, shifting away to Ethnic Romanian (solo Dinu, with accomp.)

5. Final free improv. together, 1 minute

based on the following poem by John Gilbert.

See: http://www.nyu.edu/classes/gilbert/cassandra/cassandra3.html:

Song of Cassandra
by John Gilbert
© Copyright 1999 John V. Gilbert All Rights Reserved

I.Remembering (fragment)

Do you remember the wind, Cassandra?
Do you remember the fierce, strident howling
Of the wind?
Do you remember the wind's deceit---
The destructive force
That tore our world apart?

II. Seduction (fragment)

You are the eternal temptress
Offering the hollow promise
Of immortality.
I am ravished by your vivacious incandescence,
By the sheer magnitude of your vision.
You excavate past dynasties,
Transforming them into mansions
Yet to be

III. Betrayal (fragment)

Where are your prophecies now, Cassandra---
Dissolved in the wake of multiple realities---
Of Truth divided into endless corridors?
Apollo's curse continues, even now---
Troy has vanished,
And the towers of Thebes
Lay buried beneath the debris of history.

IV. Destruction (fragment)

You saw the horrors of war
And wept when we did not believe you.
And now I weep
At my betrayal.
Betraying you,
I betrayed myself and the world.

V. Searching

Where are you now, Cassandra?
I search the streets, the coffee-houses, the galleries, the bars---
You are nowhere and everywhere---
Your face is etched in my mind.
I search and hope to find you---
Everywhere I look I am haunted by the vision
Of you.

VI. Renaissance

And yet, you live, Cassandra.
Centuries cannot erase
The enigma of your smile.

You invade imagination---
Opening worlds
Through your magical muse,
Creating the future
As the distillation
Of all that we have been
And all we might have been.