This spring, the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company (MJDC) brings back the popular speaker series “Leaders at the Lab: Conversations with Working Artists” to the Margaret Jenkins Dance Lab in San Francisco. Artistic Director, Margaret Jenkins will host a conversation with national and local leaders in the dance field about the innovative models and career choices they have developed to stay inspired and thrive. Each salon-style discussion will include a question and answer period with the audience and be followed by a reception.

Simone Forti (born 1935) is an Italian born American choreographer and writer. In 1955 she began studying improvisation with Anna Halprin in the San Francisco Bay Area, and performed in Halprin’s Dancer’s Workshop. In 1959, she moved to New York and studied composition at the Merce Cunningham Studio with musicologist/dance educator Robert Dunn. In the spring of 1961 she presented a full evening of what she called dance-constructions, including Huddle, Slant Board and See Saw. It was a seminal event in contemporary dance, and helped forge the direction of the Judson Dance Theatre. For the past two decades, she has been developing Logomotion; improvising movement and spoken word. Forti’s Handbook in Motion was published in 1974, by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Oh, Tongue was published in 2003 by Beyond Baroque Books. In 2005 she was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in dance.

“Improvising movement and language in world
context, I use the analogy of flying a kite. The streaming
of thought and movement is the wind. The subject
is the string that holds the improvisation taught,
so it can stay aloft, ducking and rising.”

SIMON FORTI

FOR INFORMATION
call 415.861.3940
e-mail chime@mjdc.org
or visit www.mjdc.org

All events are free and will be followed by a reception.

Leaders at the Lab is a project of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company • www.mjdc.org