Meet The Company
JAY
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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 GOODRUMMarketing Director / Performer
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Helen Goodrum holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in Dance from Roehampton University, London, UK, and has built a diverse career as a performer, choreographer, and creative developer. She has worked as Production Assistant at Crimson Coast Dance (Canada), Development Assistant at Earthdance (USA), and Deputy Artistic Director at the Margot Fonteyn Academy of Ballet. Her exposure to stilts led her to explore the integration of dance, aerial arts, and acrobatics at Greentop Circus (UK).As an internationally recognized freelance artist, Helen collaborates with various companies worldwide, teaching and performing across the globe. She is a core member of The Carpetbag Brigade Physical Theater, where she also serves as Marketing Director. A leading innovator in the field of acrobatic stilt dancing, Helen has been instrumental in advancing stilt-based movement vocabulary and has received the AIDF Arts Council Grant twice to support her research in this area.
Helen co-directs, organizes, and teaches at the Global Stilt Congress, an international gathering for stilt practitioners. Her movement education expertise is enriched by her qualifications as a certified Rolfing® Structural Integration Practitioner, Rolf Movement® Practitioner, CranioSacral Practitioner, Franklin Method Pelvic Floor Trainer, and as a Board Certified Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork therapist. She is also deeply influenced by her studies with the Axis Syllabus International Research Community, her training in Contact Improvisation dance, and her work as a circus aerialist and acrobat. When not performing Helen has her own health and wellness business, Artful Healthcare, in Prescott, Arizona. |
ALICIA GERSTEINPerformer
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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.
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CAMILO ANDRES JIMENEZ MORALESPerformer
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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.
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© Carpetbag Brigade Physical Theater
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