David Finn

Bio:

David Finn’s professional career as a lighting designer began at the age of 16, working for the puppeteer Burr Tillstrom and Kukla, Fran & Ollie.

David assisted lighting designer Jennifer Tipton and recreated her lighting for Jerome Robbins’ and Twyla Tharp’s ballets for major companies worldwide. David toured as the lighting director for Twyla Tharp & Dancers and designed the lighting for Grand Pas, Sextet, The Men’s Piece, and Octet. As resident lighting designer for Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project from 1993-2000, David designed works by acclaimed choreographers including Merce Cunningham, Hanya Holm, Jose Limon, Sara Rudner, Dana Reitz, Tamasaburo Bando, Karole Armitage, Kevin O’Day, Neil Greenberg, Lucy Guerin, & Kraig Patterson.

David’s first lighting design for dance was for The Birmingham Royal Ballet of Birmingham, England in 1989 – Sir Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker designed by John Macfarlane. He also designed Swan Lake, Frankenstein, and Sweet Violets for The Royal Ballet, Cinderella for the Birmingham Royal Ballet, and Swan Lake for The Bayerisches Staatsballett in Munich. Full-lengths also include The Queen of Spades for The Royal Danish Ballet, The Nutcracker for The Atlanta Ballet, The Seagull for The Bolshoi Ballet, The Crucible for Scottish Ballet, and Anna Karenina for The Joffrey Ballet/Australian Ballet.

Much of David’s work as a designer is for ground-breaking inter-disciplinary work including the dance-operas Les L’Armes du Ciel for the Luzerner Theater, La Guerra D’Amore (Lausanne, San Francisco & Braunshweig), dance-theater works Senza Fine and The Day I Go to the Body – by Joachim Schlömer for The Salzburg Festival. David and director/choreographer Joachim Schlömer started the inter-disciplinary project the fischhouse in 2001 in the Bay Area.

As an architectural lighting designer, he designed a permanent installation entitled Steps in Time in the Hyperion Theater for Walt Disney’s California Adventureland. David continues to consult for many architects throughout the world, including Ron Pompei of Pompei A.D. (Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie), Architecture & Light, and Gensler (QVC).  Productions for Cirque du Soleil: ZED (Tokyo), Michael Jackson One and R.U.N. (Las Vegas). Exhibits and installations include The Hunger Games Exhibit for VGE/Lionsgate at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas; the launch of “R.E.M.,” a new make-up line from Ariana Grande; and creative direction/lighting design for The Crystal Lobby, produced by The Hettema Group, a crystal and LED installation in a lobby of the Galaxy Casino in Macau.

Film work includes the lighting design for stage scenes in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence. David directed a documentary film, The Green Monster, which premiered for POV on PBS in 1999. The film was inducted into the Museum of Television and Radio in New York as one of the ten best documentary films in 1999.