Workshop

Kitchen Sink: Performance Skills for the end of the world

April 26th & 27th, 12pm-5pm
401 Alabama Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

Admission for 2 day workshop – $280

Admission for 1 day workshop (Saturday or Sunday) – $140

Join lifelong collaborators Joe Goode and Marit Brook-Kothlow for a weekend of skills practice. Learn to make the kind of dance/theater that is a tonic for a tender world.

Using JGPG’s signature creative processes, participants will be guided in cultivating personal source materials that emerge from the “felt experience” and shaping them into performance language and embodied action.

We will move alone and together using JGPG’s choreographic methodologies to learn how differently we tell the stories we need to hear when we listen to our bodies.

Workshop will include: 

• Movement for Humans- exploring the healing pleasure of sensation and simple mobility
• Practicing Form – propagating dynamic dancing from an intuitive, sensitive, perceptive body.
• Writing from the Body- writing that draws on what the body knows
• Metta practice – generating empathy through movement, voice, touch, and collaborative action
• The Power of Making and Crafting – learning to distill, edit and arc material into a cohesive whole
• Nudging sound into song – becoming vocal through the body’s pathways. Movement and breathing exercises to prepare the body to sing.

Image Description: Marit sits at a table with Joe in front of a couple of red chairs and an apple laptop and coffee on the table. She points outward as Joe looks at her to the left.   

our bodies are also stories 

an introduction to dance theater with JGPG company members 

Damara Vita Ganley and Wailana Simcock 

Dates + Times:

9 week series March 3rd – April 28th 

Mondays 5:30-7pm 

Your attendance for the full series is preferred but not required

$180 for full series |  $25 for drop in 

(Please reach out if finances are a barrier to attending. [email protected]) 

You are invited:

To move and be moved. 

To feel the full expression of your body. 

To be curious and led by your senses. 

To live into life through your body. 

 No previous dance or theater experience is necessary.

This 9 week series will offer:

• Intro to contemporary dance techniques – cultivating generative energy through momentum-based floorwork, improvisations in “kinesthetic delight”, inversions and phrase work across the floor. 
• our bodies have stories too – story sharing and writing from our personal experiences, dreams, and longings as an invocation for our lived experiences to come through our felt senses. 
• creation reciprocity – performance practices for being together

Bios:

Wailana Simcock was born in the Philippines and raised in Hawai‘i.  They were born to a Waray-Waray (Samar) mother and Scottish father from Aotearoa (New Zealand). They speak Tagalog, ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i, and Hawaiian Pidgin. Wailana is a performing artist, choreographer, and director.  They have also been known to moonlight as drag artist and curator, Magdalena. Outside of the performing arts, they work as licensed massage therapist and have started a small textile/fashion design company, We Blood. Wailana earned an MFA degree in Dance from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in 2016.  While in Hawaii they formed their own aerial and contemporary dance company, Wai Company (2010-16). In Hawai‘i, they performed and taught with Samadhi Hawaii, Tau Dance Theatre, IONA Contemporary Dance Theatre, ‘Ulalena (Lāhaina) and studied with Hālau o Kekuhi (Keaukaha).  They also taught creative movement in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i at the Hawaiian immersions schools Nāwahīokalani‘ōpu‘u (Kea‘au) and Ka ‘Umeke Kā‘eo (Keaukaha). They were also the founding and artistic director of both Kalani Performing Arts Festival (2010-2012) and Puna Music Festival (2012).  Back in the mid 1990’s in Ohlone Territory, Wailana began their performance career as principal dancer to Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians (1995-2000) and also worked with Steamroller during that time. Returning in 2017, also from Hawai‘i, they worked again with Steamroller, and joined groups KAMBARA + DANCERS and Fogbeast. Presently, they are a teaching artist and core dancer to both BANDALOOP and Joe Goode Performance Group since 2018. Wailana is living in their Philippine diaspora on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone people –  a land colonially known as San Francisco.

Damara Vita Ganley (she/they) is a Bay Area dance theater artist dedicated to alchemical creativity. They are grateful to be in long time creative collaborations with the Joe Goode Performance Group, BANDALOOP, Fog Beast Dance and D.A.P collective. These creative connections have generously invited her on many national and international journeys in performance, teaching and learning.  Following degrees in Anthropology, Critical Feminist Theory and Performance, Play and Design, her artistic career has included opportunities to perform with Mel Wong, Ellen Webb, Nancy Karp, Jo Kreiter/Flyaway Productions, Gerald Casel Dance, Cid Pearlman, Holcombe Waller, Erin Mei-ling Stuart/emspace dance, Manuelito Biag/Shift Dance Theatre, and Lisa Townsend.  She currently shares dance practices as a lecturer at UCSC, with people with Parkinson’s, Veterans, Care Providers, At Bay Area High Schools,  SFArtsEd Middle School performers, Broadway performers and anyone inspired to feel and move.  

Image Description: Photo on the right is of Wailana standing at the bottom of the staircase with their hand pointing to their other elbow making an “L shape”. Photo on the left is of Damara holding a rock and wearing a large skirt—lifting the rock upward in a high released position facing a wall. 

“To feel something in an unfeeling world is an act of redemption” ~ Joe Goode

2025 Spring Workshop with Joe Goode – The Felt Experience

Workshop Date + Time

2025 Spring Workshop with Joe Goode

Sunday March 23rd 12-5pm 

Pricing: $175

A weekend workshop with Joe Goode designed to revitalize and nourish your creativity. 

How does sensation guide us?

Are we capable of refining our powers of intuition?

Of trusting what the body knows?

Starting with the “felt experience” is key to entering the creative space, whether we want to use it in our work or our daily lives. The “Felt Experience” methodology is about trusting that the body and its sensations are just as important as the brain in determining a course of action. Becoming awake to how you feel in a given moment is a way of waking up to your life and its possibilities. This is a workshop about finding the inspiration that is right at your fingertips to inhabit your life, your work, and your relationships more deeply and deliberately. 

There is no dance or performance background necessary. Just bring your curiosity and something to write on. 

Workshop will include:

Movement for Humans- exploring the healing pleasure of simple mobility

Seeing and Being Seen- facilitated partner exercises that.generate empathy through movement, voice, touch, and collaborative action

The power of Making- after generating materials that come from our “felt” experience, we can then place them together to make a kind of altar, a place of recognition that our feeling selves are the ultimate resource.

Image Description: Two dancers stand in the corner of a grey room. One is shirtless standing with wide legs, arms outstretched towards the dancer to the right, looking upwards, while the other has her back and arms towards the wall in a purple dress and on tiptoes. A final third dancer’s silhouette can be seen sitting in the forefront of the image with her arm on her knee.