The Joe Goode Performance Group - About Us

Joe Goode Performance Group's innovative form of dance-theater is accessible, personal, and explores unabashed emotional terrain with humor and honesty. Using text, voice, and high velocity movement, JGPG blurs the line between theater and dance to make work that is thoughtful, groundbreaking, and deeply felt. JGPG believes in the power of theater to create a transformational experience. The work touches on social issues—including gender, race and sexuality—with the idea of illuminating and investigating in order to stimulate questions and conversations. And perhaps remind the viewer of his/her own humanity, however flailing or imperfect that might be.

Where a piece like The Maverick Strain uses both camp and poetry to illuminate the resilience of the outsider, their much-lauded collaboration with avant-garde puppeteer Basil Twist in Wonderboy tells a tale of searching for love and belonging by using a “queer” puppet-boy in the central role. Their installation work, Traveling Light, muses on the necessity of shedding the confines of excess in order to move forward, while the award-winning dance/play, Deeply There, examines the havoc brought on by the AIDS crisis. The company has made over 25 works since its inception and has a devoted following in its home city of San Francisco. While maintaining a robust touring schedule domestically, the company has also performed in Europe, Canada, Africa and the Middle East.

The Joe Goode Performance Group has received multiple awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, SF Arts Commission, and the California Arts Council, as well as receiving the Isadora Duncan Dance Award ("Izzie") for both choreography and performance and the New York Dance and Performance Award ("Bessie") for choreography.