Meet The Company

JAY
​RUBY

Founder / Director
​Jay Ruby choreographs action to animate social space and invigorate collective reflection. He cultivates spectacle-based drama using principles of precarity practice. Engaging in festal culture as an aspect of contemporary ritual Jay Ruby applies modalities of theater, circus and dance to address the inequities and wounds of our times.
As founder and director of The Carpetbag Brigade (TCB) he stewarded the company since its inception in Prescott, Arizona in 1997. The company, host and founder of the free all-ages festival Tsunami on the Square transitioned to become an international touring company based in San Francisco, California. Known for its innovative and pioneering use of acrobatic stilting outside of non-traditional venues Jay Ruby has nurtured TCB’s unique style of performance by integrating the traditions of acrobatic stilts, butoh dance, contact improvisation and physical theater.
As artistic and executive director of TCB he facilitated the direction of the touring stilt performances Mudfire and The Vanishing Point which were performed in North and South America and Europe in a diverse array of festivals.
Jay Ruby has lead collaborations and conducted workshops with diverse performance company’s including Flamchen, NaCl, Hand2Mouth Theatre, Sojourner Theater, Wise Fool, Bright Night International, Crimson Coast Dance Society, and Pandoum Theater. He organized and presided over TCB’s 4 month residency at UNESCO’s Universal Forum of the Cultures in Monterrey, Mexico in 2007. He regularly organizes intensive seminars to share the seeds of TCB’s work.
Jay Ruby has a B.A. in Psychology from Antioch College and studied theater in Berlin, Germany at Theater Zerbrochene Fenster and later with Roberta Carreri of the Odin Teatret in Holstebro, Denmark. He supplemented his theatrical training through learning experiences with David Clarkson of Stalker Theater, Diego Pinon Ritual Butoh Mexicano, Contact Improvisation practitioners Steve Paxton and Nancy Stark Smith as well as travel to examine ritual and performance in Bali and Mexico. Jay practices Ashtanga Yoga and Vipassana.

HELEN GOODRUM

Marketing Director / Performer
Helen Goodrum graduated with a Dance Bachelor of Arts (Honors) from Roehampton University London, UK and commenced a modern dance career. She was Production Assistant at Crimson Coast Dance (Canada) and Development Assistant at Earthdance (USA). Exposure to stilts prompted her to explore the integration of dance, aerial and acrobatics at Greentop Circus, England. As an international freelance performer, choreographer and creative developer Helen collaborates with diverse companies teaching and performing worldwide. A core member of The Carpetbag Brigade Physical Theater and the company’s Marketing and Communications Director, Helen is a leading artist in the field of acrobatic stilt dancing. She forges innovative development in the field through her teaching, training, collaboration and performance, and has twice been awarded the AIDF Arts Council Grant to advance stilting vocabulary. Helen co-directs, organizes and teaches as part of the Global Stilt Congress, a gathering of international stilters. Helen’s research of the human body and movement education is supplemented by her qualifications as a certified Rolfing® Structural Integration Practitioner, certified Rolf Movement® Practitioner, CranioSacral Practitioner, Franklin Method Pelvic Floor Trainer and Board Certified in Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork. She is inspired by her research with the Axis Syllabus International Research Community, Contact Improvisation dance and her training as an aerialist and acrobat. When not performing Helen has her own health and wellness business, Artful Healthcare, in Prescott, Arizona. 

ALICIA GERSTEIN

Performer
​Alicia Gerstein first learned how to walk on stilts as a child at Bread & Puppet Theater, and much later began exploring techniques combining physical theater, acrobatics, and dance, with Nemcatacoa Teatro (Bogota, Colombia) and The Carpetbag Brigade. She performs as part of both of these companies, in Colombia and the US.  She has been a puppeteer for many years with Bread & Puppet Theater (Glover, VT), Great Small Works (Brooklyn, NY), El Teatro Indigena de la Sierra Tarahumara (Chihuahua, Mexico), and other puppet theaters. Alicia also works as a teaching artist in public schools in New York City, where she lives.

CAMILO ANDRES JIMENEZ MORALES

Performer
​Camilo Andrés Jiménez Morales began his artistic career in 2001, with a community artistic creation process with Kerigma in Colombia. He joined the Colombian stilting ensemble Nemcatacoa Teatro in 2011. He studied Theater Direction at University, which allows him to understand the dramatic construction of the body and image, preparing him to become the Artistic Director of Nemcatacoa Teatro for the last 5 productions in Colombia. His focus is theater from the body and movement; he has developed gymnastics and parkour training over the past several years to be able to adopt movements from these disciplines to stilts. Camilo lives in Bogota Colombia and has performed with Carpetbag Brigade international for the past decade. 

RENN BANKOWSKI

Performer
Renn Bankowski (they/them) is a multidisciplinary performing artist, specializing in dance and choreography, acrobatic stilting, drag, and music. They divide their time between artistic endeavours, dreaming, and supporting movements led by Indigenous Land and Water defenders. They currently live on the traditional, unceded and stolen land of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, colonially known as "Vancouver, Canada." They are inspired by the intersections of art and social justice.
Renn graduated with honours from Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke on Kanien'kehà:ka territory (so-called Montréal, Québec), earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a double major in Contemporary Dance and Women’s Studies. Over the years they have dedicatedly deepened their studies of performance and embodiment, notably with teachers in the Axis Syllabus Community, with David Smith’s Creative Development and Transformation Through Clown course, with BodyWeather, and with Xing Yi Nei Gong.
Renn has been a part of numerous performance projects worldwide, including clowning with The Gesundheit! Institute (USA) in Peru, collaborating with multidisciplinary artists at E|MERGE at Earthdance (USA), and dancing and choreographing as part of Biblioteca do Corpo in Austria and Brazil. In 2015 they were hired by The Carpetbag Brigade (USA), learned how to stilt, and joined the company as a performer and teacher. Locally, Renn performs and teaches as part of the neighborhood festivals and community organizations, and has a private practice as a certified Rolfing® Structural Integration Practitioner. They are currently collaborating on a multidisciplinary, acrobatic stilt and dance piece with former member of the Carpetbag Brigade, Isabelle Kirouac. Renn continues to work at deepening their understanding of the meeting points between performance, embodied movement practice, and community health and relations.
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