Simpson/Stulberg Collaborations

About This Artist

Lauren Simpson is a choreographer, performer, and arts educator. She has danced for Liz Lerman and Risa Jaroslow. She teaches at the University of San Francisco. Lauren is a founding member of the Bay Area dance company, Simpson/Stulberg Collaborations. SSC has been nominated for two Izzie Awards and received support from Dancers’ Group, the Zellerbach Family Foundation and Rainin Opportunity Fund. Recent residencies include the CHIME Program at the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and the AIR Program at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. SSC was FACT/SF’s resident JUMP Choreographer in 2015. M.F.A., University of Colorado-Boulder. Ed.M, Harvard University. B.A. Carleton College.

Jenny Stulberg is co-artistic director of Simpson/Stulberg Collaborations. SSC has been nominated for two Izzie Awards and received support from Dancers’ Group, the Zellerbach Family Foundation and Rainin Opportunity Fund. Recent residencies include the CHIME Program at the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and the AIR Program at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. SSC was FACT/SF’s resident JUMP Choreographer in 2015. Jenny has danced for Hope Mohr and Xandra Ibarra/La Chica Boom. Her dance-­films have screened in festivals across the country including San Francisco Dance Film Festival, and her film-work has been employed by companies such as Joe Goode Performance Group and BANDALOOP. M.F.A. NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Robyn Gerbaz is a dancer and choreographer from Aspen, Colorado. She began her training with Aspen Santa Fe Ballet before graduating from Interlochen Arts Academy. She holds a BFA Magna Cum Laude from LINES Ballet/Dominican University. Additionally, she trained at (selected) Cornish College, SF Conservatory of Dance, Ponderosa Tanzland, New Dialect, Springboard Danse Montreal and with Chunky Move. She has performed works by Sidra Bell, Christian Burns, William Forsythe, Amanda Miller, Kate Wallich and Johannes Wieland. Robyn has been a member of Maurya Kerr’s tinypistol since 2012 and is also currently with Alex Ketley’s The Foundry.

Arletta Anderson is a Bay Area-based dance artist.Locally, she has danced for choreographers and companies such as Simpson/Stulberg Collaborations, Gerald Casel, Christy Funsch, detour dance, Stephen Pelton and Aura Fishbeck. With collaborator Adam Smith, Arletta creates multidisciplinary performance work that brings together movement, theater and music.

About this Project

Still Life Dances is a series of dance works based on visual art works, primarily paintings. S/S’s approach to creating them is similar to the way 19th century American still life painters approached their work- they valued precision, careful composition, and the placement of light. They often painted rotting fruit or decaying carcasses, things that changed and morphed faster than they could be painted with the detail it required. Their impossible task of attempting to make the impermanent permanent set our wheels in motion in the studio.

Realness, intimacy, curious moments, and a sense of being compelled to pay deep attention to fleeting action are experiences we hope the audience will have when they see our work. In making these Still Life Dances, we are left with the impression, and possibly the personal truth, that the body is not fixed, concrete, or monotone, but a changing, ephemeral, experiential entity that is continually being abstracted in art and dance and life.

Still Life No. 8 is a dance for three performers. The eighth work in the Still Life series, it explores ideas of ephemerality and permanence, stillness and action. It features an original set, music and costume design.

Photos by Robbie Sweeny