After living at Mad Brook Farm for ten years, Forti returned to Los Angeles in 1998 to be with and help care for her mother Milka. That same year, Forti began a 17-year teaching career in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures, which included courses Beginning Improvisation, Advanced Improvisation, Advanced Choreography, and Advanced Interdisciplinary Composition. Forti also taught a series of "Movement/Language" workshops at the Church In Ocean Park in Santa Monica, and invited a nucleus of students that attended those workshops to perform a dance improv piece (Open Air Improvisation) with her at the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in 2002, calling the ensemble of dancers "5". After this 2002 performance, Forti began attending workshops and giving performances and readings at Beyond Baroque, and developed a friendship and working relationship with writer/editor Fred Dewey, Beyond Baroque's Director at the time. In 2003, Dewey edited and published Forti's book Oh, Tongue on Beyond Baroque's publishing imprint, Beyond Baroque Foundation. Oh, Tongue would eventually be published in French and have 2nd and 3rd editions published in English. In July 2005, Forti was invited to perform at the REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater) in downtown Los Angeles as part of their annual New Original Works (NOW) Festival. With collaborators writer/improv artist Terrence Luke Johnson, dancer/choreographer Sarah Swenson, and musician/composer Douglas Wadle, Forti performed the dance/theater piece Unbuttoned Sleeves. Forti, Johnson, Swenson, and Wadle called their small ensemble "The Sleeves", and collaboratively published the book Unbuttoned Sleeves on the Beyond Baroque Foundation imprint in 2006. The Sleeves created and performed four additional dance/theater pieces together around Los Angeles: "101" (2006) at Highways Performance Space, Turtles All The Way Down at The Unknown Theater(2007), To Borrow Salt (2009) at The Box Gallery Chinatown, and Conversation Piece (2010) at Highways Performance Space. Jeremiah Day, Fred Dewey, and Simone Forti traveled to London in May 2009 to attend and perform at the book launch party for Jeremiah Day/Simone Forti (2009, Project Press), a book that was developed from the exhibition Simone Forti/Jeremiah Day "News Animations"/"No Words For You, Springfield'", which ran from March 27 to May 3, 2008, at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin. At the launch party, Forti and Day performed a News Animation together, and Dewey gave a reading. Forti, Day, and Dewey performed and exhibited several more times together as a trio from 2009–2015, including at the Santa