Raissa Simpson

Raissa Simpson is a dance artist and performance studies scholar. Her interdisciplinary dances are at the intersection of racial and cultural identities that centers discourse on the complex experiences of racialized bodies. Through her research Simpson investigates how Race is performed in theatrical settings, the mass media, activism, and in daily life. Her interest lies in the body as a site for racial discourse alongside new media and technology. She directs the San Francisco-based PUSH Dance Company. Recent tours have included the Aspen Fringe Festival and UC Santa Cruz’s SURGE Afrofuturism Festival. PUSH is currently preparing to open, in 2023, the first BIPOC Sanctuary in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author of Writings On Dance: Artistic Reframing for Celestial Black Bodies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), which offers considerations on how Afrofuturism is staged in contemporary theater. She joins the Stanford TAPS faculty in fall 2022 as a full-time core lecturer in dance.

Projects:

• Thick Solidarity CoLAB