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SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 20, 2006—Joe Goode, artistic director of the Bay Area's premiere dance theater company, Joe Goode Performance Group, and Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT), composer, celebrated conductor and music director of the San Francisco Symphony, today announced details regarding their auspicious collaboration on Stay Together, an experimental dance theater work to be given its world premiere June 2-11, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater prior to a national tour in 2006/07.

Presented as the highlight of the company's 20th anniversary season, Stay Together marks the first time Goode and Tilson Thomas have worked together, and is the first time Tilson Thomas has composed music for a dance company. From Goode, that "subversive artist who must be watched"; (LA Times), the home season program will include a revised edition of his landmark dance theater work, Deeply There (stories of a neighborhood).

The genesis of the Goode-Tilson Thomas collaboration goes back to 2002 when the two artists began discussing ways to work together. Over the years, Tilson Thomas has attended several of Goode's performances and became intrigued by the choreographer's fusion of text, song, multi-media and high-velocity movement. Together, they selected one of MTT's theater songs, "Stay Together," a "mordant homage to a bygone era of pop," according to the composer. Though the song is the central musical element of the dance, it is a touchstone for other musical and theatrical developments, expanded and reshaped for the purposes of Goode's narrative. In this deconstruction process, the artists will experiment with ways of creating epiphanies of movement and sound, forging intersections where language, music and dance can comfortably exist together.

"Our efforts, thus far, have resulted in new music and movement sections that are inspired by a tiny gesture in the original composition or a fragment of the original lyrics," commented Goode. "Of course, for me, just the title alone offers endless possibilities of how we stay together in a society that dogmatically emphasizes the new." As it seems to be unfolding, Stay Together regards an older artist and how he approaches his work, his personal relationships, and what it takes to stay together not with a desired effect, but with an appetite for dialogue.

The creative team for Stay Together includes Joe Goode, choreography; Michael Tilson Thomas, composer; Jack Carpenter, lighting designer; Erik Flatmo, scenic design; Austin Forbord, videographer; Wendy Sparks, costume designer; and Heather Basarab, production manager. This multi-media work, performed to MTT's electronic score, is set on five dancers. Artists of the company include Elizabeth Burritt, Marit Brook-Kothlow, Felipe Barrueto Cabello, Melecio Estrella, Rubén Graciani, & Joe Goode.

Deeply There, Goode's powerful and critically praised 1998 response to the AIDS epidemic, will serve as the ideal companion piece for an evening that represents the best of 20 years of provocative and enlightening dance theater. Goode's kinetic narrative explores the havoc of the AIDS crisis and how San Francisco's Castro District has reshaped itself into a more humane and diverse community, examining the many unlikely alliances and alternate family structures born out of necessity with the urban AIDS culture.

Deeply There won a 1999 New York Dance and Performance Award, the "Bessie." Dance critic Jennifer Dunning of The New York Times likened the effect of the work to the ache at the heart of James Agee's novel, A Death in the Family, further praising Goode's piece as "fresh, touching and wickedly funny."

The creative team for Deeply There (stories of a neighborhood) includes Joe Goode, choreographer; Robin Holcomb, composer; Michael Brown, scenic design; Angelina Deantonis, costume designer; and Heather Basarab, production manager. The work is set on seven dancers and a child.

Founded in 1986, the Joe Goode Performance Group incorporated as a non-profit organization with the mission of providing a support structure for the artistic work of Joe Goode. Over the past 20 years, the multi-award winning company has performed annually in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has toured extensively throughout the United States. Abroad, Joe Goode's artistry has been acclaimed at dance venues and festivals in Europe, South America, Canada, Africa and the Middle East including the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theater. In addition to a dynamic stage repertory, which includes the recently premiered commissioned play, the Body Familiar, at San Francisco's Magic Theatre, Joe Goode has been hailed for inventive installations at museums and galleries across the U.S. Goode's current activities include creating a new work for the Pittsburgh-based Dance Alloy, and working with the San Francisco Opera Center on their forthcoming production of Conrad Susa's Transformations.

MTT was appointed music director and conductor of the San Francisco Symphony eleven years ago, and is a frequent guest conductor with the world's leading orchestras and soloists. In 1995, he was named Conductor of the Year by Musical America. Over the years, MTT has been acclaimed for his work as a composer, giving several world premieres with the San Francisco Symphony. In 1999, MTT conducted the Symphony in the first orchestral version of Three Songs to Poems by Walt Whitman, sung by baritone Thomas Hampson, and in 2001, Renée Fleming premiered his song cycle Poems of Emily Dickinson.

Tilson Thomas's other notable compositions include a contrabassoon concerto, Urban Legend; a work entitled Island Music, a celebration of percussion dedicated to the late Lou Harrison; From the Diary of Anne Frank, commissioned by UNICEF, and performed by the New World Symphony with guest narrator Audrey Hepburn; and, Showa/Shoah, a work commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, for the Pacific Music Festival Orchestra.

Joe Goode Performance Group and the creation of Stay Together has been generously funded by Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, San Francisco Arts Commission, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, JP Morgan Chase Foundation, Altria Group, Inc. and National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts. Additional funding for Stay Together includes the Dance: Creation to Performance program, funded by The James Irvine Foundation.

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