Joe Goode is a seminal California based dance–theater artist who has made boundary breaking work for four decades since his arrival in San Francisco in the late seventies. In 1979, Joe Goode began synthesizing a genre of dance-theater that combined text, gestures, and humor with his own deeply physical, high velocity dancing. As an innovative leading figure in the San Francisco dance community, he broke from East Coast formalist traditions and influenced an entire generation of West Coast dance makers to expand the way they create and present work. Joe’s work often explores themes of gender, identity, and societal expectations and his signature work, 29 Effeminate Gestures, created in 1987, has become a staple of gender studies curricula throughout the United States. At the height of the AIDS epidemic, uplifting Joe’s voice was a radical act. Four decades later, Joe’s voice remains radical and necessary.
As a choreographer, writer, and director Joe Goode is known for his willingness to collide movement with spoken word, song, and visual imagery to create resonant work that promotes understanding, compassion and tolerance. Joe’s work traditionally incorporates source material from interviews with community members that is woven into a collective narrative and his company is noted for its work with veterans through The Resilience Project, which aims to explore how humans deal with trauma, using storytelling and performance as a way of finding universality and strength in the face of adversity.
Joe Goode’s core education methodology of Movement for Humans has been used in thousands of classes and workshops, as well as adapted for his company’s Resilience Project’s work with veterans, and in-school Inspired Bodies youth education for middle and high school students. Notably, he has utilized his Movement for Humans methodology as the five-year Chair of the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley and in his facilitation of dance residencies at universities across the country.
Since forming his award-winning Joe Goode Performance Group (JGPG) in 1986, Joe Goode has become celebrated for creating large scale devised immersive work in non-traditional spaces, such as the old San Francisco Mint and forged an ongoing partnership with SF Heritage to mount work in San Francisco landmark spaces. Joe’s work is also presented in intimate spaces that include his home studio theater space, The Joe Goode Annex which he shares as a resource for the Bay Area dance and theater community. JGPG has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, South America, the Middle East and Africa.
Joe Goode is a treasured member of the performance art-making community of the San Francisco Bay Area. His legacy now extends across the country and he has profoundly influenced and changed the way dance-theater pieces are made as well as what they say. Joe’s stated concern for his work as an artist is to provide a deeply felt, profoundly human experience in the theater. Joe Goode has done that and more for a legion of people who have been fortunate to witness his artistry and humanity.