Joe Goode Performance Group Celebrates 30 Years, 6/22-24

The Joe Goode Performance Group, in partnership with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, celebrates three decades of innovative dance-theater and inspiring artistry this June 22-24, 2017 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater.

The centerpiece of the celebration will be the world premiere of Nobody Lives Here Now, a poetic fable that mines questions of identity, aging, and disappearance as part of the fragile human condition. The piece tells the story of a fantastical world where the things that anchor us - home, culture, people - rapidly shift and erode, and the characters find themselves faced with sudden transformation. What happens when things vanish in an instant, when our vitality, place, and identity disappear? Nobody Lives Here Now is laced with JGPG's signature humor and song. It is highlighted by a fervent classical music score, performed live by Thalea String Quartet (the first-ever quartet in residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music) and an original set and video design by David Szlasa.

For three decades choreographer Joe Goode has been creating works about the human experience. Some of his landmark pieces will be included on the program as part of a retrospective of his choreographic career. These include Remembering the Pool at the Best Western, Wonderboy, What the Body Knows, Grace, The Rambler, and Small Experiments in Song and Dance.

JGPG company dancers performing are Felipe Barrueto-Cabello, Marit Brook-Kothlow, Melecio Estrella, Andrew Ward, Patricia West and Molly Katzman. Original company member Liz Burritt and guest performer James Graham also make a special appearance for this anniversary celebration.

Additional anniversary events include a one-night only event to benefit Joe Goode Performance Group on Friday, March 24, 2017 at 7pm at the Joe Goode Annex and a performance as part of Dancers' Group's Rotunda Dance Series on Friday, June 2 at 12pm at City Hall.

About Joe Goode
Joe Goode is a choreographer, writer, and director widely known as an innovator in the field of dance for his willingness to collide movement with spoken word, song, and visual imagery. He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007, and the United States Artists Glover Fellowship in 2008. In 2006 Goode directed the opera Transformations for the San Francisco Opera Center. His play Body Familiar, commissioned by the Magic Theatre in 2003, was met with critical acclaim.

The Joe Goode Performance Group, formed in 1986, tours regularly throughout the U.S., and has toured internationally to Canada, Europe, South America, Africa, and the Middle East. Goode is known as a master teacher; his summer workshops in "felt performance" attract participants from around the world, and the company's teaching residencies on tour are hugely popular. He is a member of the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley in the department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies.

Goode's performance-installation works have been commissioned by the Fowler Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles, Krannert Art Museum, the Capp Street Project, the M.H. de Young Museum, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. His dance theater work has been commissioned by Pennsylvania Ballet, Zenon Dance Company, AXIS Dance Company and Dance Alloy Theater among others. Goode and his work have been recognized by numerous awards for excellence including the American Council on the Arts, the New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie), and Isadora Duncan Dance Awards (Izzies).