Project Title: The Body Familiar
Recipient Organization: Magic Theatre
Lead Artist: Joe Goode
Genre and Date Awarded: Performing Arts, June 2002
Presented: January 3-February 9, 2003

Choreographer Joe Goode and the Magic Theatre joined forces to develop a new work, challenging the separation between dance and theatre and continuing Goode’s series “What the Body Knows,” an exploration of transformation, gender, and the body’s intuitive and instinctual knowledge. The “Body Knows” series was first inspired by the profound religious experiences of the women Goode grew up with in Virginia. Goode writes that the ever-evolving mission in his work is to “pierce the veil of toughness that we all have in our lives and to uncover the vulnerable center, the confused, flailing human part of us that we conceal and avoid.” In The Body Familiar, his collaborative piece with the Magic Theater, Goode continued moving from this thematic base to consider the extraordinary personal and private transformative moments of ordinary people.

In an equally profound shift, The Body Familiar was Joe Goode’s first play, following his creation of many text-rich dances. Collaborating with the Magic Theatre and its then artistic director Larry Eilenberg, allowed Goode to “go whole hog into language,” expanding the theatrical potential of his work with dramaturgical and other kinds of play development support from the magic. Goode wrote and directed the work.

The Body Familiar, indeed, pierced that vulnerable center, the “confused, flailing human part.” Its lead character, Leonard is a visual artist with a fascination for body parts: he assembles the bones, organs and skins of animals into installations and sculptures, and the entrails of animals are dripping ribbons that drape his New York studio. His good friend and patron is Kitty, a witty socialite, who has married into an obscenely wealthy family, descended from the original governor of Rhode Island. Her husband, Bull, is haunted by the memory of his late first wife Simone. Bull’s sister Catherine is plagued by the ghost of their overbearing mother. And Leonard longs for the only man he ever truly loved. On a classic “weekend in the country” with Kitty and Bull, Leonard encounters the despair and dignity hidden in others, and confronts his own detachment and ennui. In the San Francisco Chronicle, critic Octavio Roca wrote, “Body Familiar is…a memory play that jet-sets in the mind from New York to Costa Rica, to London and Cape Cod….Leonard, played by Liam Vincent, is in a gender-bending love triangle that is as touching as it rings true.”

The cast included three dancers from Goode’s company—Felipe Barrueto-Cabello, Marit Brook-Kothlow, Elizabeth Burritt—and three actors who have worked with the Magic in the past—Liam Vincent, Celia Shuman, and Mark Rafael Truitt. Part of the collaboration’s richness was their exchange of creative development processes. Goode’s choreographic technique leans heavily on his long time association with many of his dancers: He draws gesture, movement, and language from their rehearsal process and improvisations. In The Body Familiar he invited the dancers and actors to work together to develop physical and vocal impressions of the characters in different situations. Movement set the tone for the language.

Recognized nationally and internationally as an innovator in contemporary dance theatre, Joe Goode has been exploring the dynamic tension between language and movement for more than 20 years. In that time his use of text has become increasingly complex, edgy, and vital, charting what he calls, “the mysterious inner terrain.” He began synthesizing text, gestures, and humor with deeply physical, high velocity dancing in 1979. His distinctive work has gained many prestigious forms of recognition. In 1995 Goode was one of only ten United States choreographers to receive a prestigious National Dance Residency Program grant (funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts); and in 1998 he was awarded one of the first Irvine Fellowships in Dance. He has received two Isadora Duncan Dance Awards (Izzies); and a New York “Bessie” award for Deeply There (stories of a neighborhood), a collaboration with Seattle composer/lyricist Robin Holcomb. He has been recognized for artistic excellence by the American Council on the Arts and the Business Arts Council; and his ensemble The Joe Goode Performance Group has been named “Best Bay Area Dance Company” by the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

The Magic Theater exists to give voice to the contemporary playwright. Founded in 1967, it has premiered more than 200 plays and championed new work by dozens of major and previously unknown playwrights, including Claire Chafee, Joseph Chaitkin, Nilo Cruz, David Mamet, John O’Keefe, Jose Rivera, Sam Shepard, and Paula Vogel. Awards and honors received by Magic artists include the Pulitzer Prize, numerous Obies, Drama-Logue Awards, PEN West, Backstage West Garland, TCG/Pew, and Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Awards. Its annual program includes a season of new works, a “raw plays” series of staged readings, themed workshop productions, an “audience talkback” program of post-performance productions, and a mentoring project bringing together professional playwrights with teenaged writers. It reaches audiences of 20,000 people each year.

Having danced as a member of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Joe Goode had been experimenting with combining high energy movement with a quirky, edgy use of language, and in 1986 he formed the Joe Goode Performance Group. Working in the margin between forms, collaborating with his company members and other artists—among them Beth Custer, Robin Holcomb, Nayland Blake, and Tim Boxell—he’s been a leading innovator in the synthesis of dance and theater.

Professional Affiliations

• Artistic Director, Joe Goode Performance Group (1986-present)

Original Choreography

• Folk, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2003)
• Mythic Montana, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2002)
• Transparent Body, Premiere, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2001)
• What the Body Knows, Premiere, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California (2001)
• Undertaking Harry, Part II, Premiere, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2000)
• Drowsy, Premiere, Dancers Group Studio, San Francisco, California (2000)
• Gender Heroes, Part I, Premiere, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (1999)
• The Boy Who Flew for Short Periods, Web project commissioned by the Queer Cultural Center. Premiere: queerculturalcenter.org, (1999)
• Jane Eyre, Commissioned by Axis Dance Company, (1999)
• Leavers: Installation Project, Commissioned by the University of California Berkeley Center for Theater Arts, Premiere, Zellerbach Playhouse, University of California, Berkeley (1999)
• Hapless, Commissioned by and Premiered at the University of California, San Diego (1999)
• As I Was Leaving, Commissioned by Department of Dance, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. Premiere: Tyron Festival Theater, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1998)
• Deeply There (stories of a neighborhood), Premiere, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (1998)
• Maverick Strain, Performance installation in collaboration with artist Nayland Blake, composer Beth Custer, and Club Foot Orchestra Quintet. Premiere, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Created with major support of the National Dance Residency Program, a program of the Pew Charitable Trusts (1996)
• Take/Place, Collaboration with composer Beth Custer; Premiere, The Cowell Theater, San Francisco, California (1995)
• Stareways, Collaborative video dance project with filmmaker Tim Boxell; Premiere, Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco, California (1994)

Commissions, Honors, and Awards

• Heritage Award, California Dance Educators Association (October 2000)
• San Francisco Isadora Duncan Dance Award, ensemble performance for Deeply There (stories of a neighborhood), (April 2000)
• BESSIE, New York Dance and Performance Award for Creation and Choreography (September 1999)
• Commissioned work: Installation for the Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Fall 1999)
• Invited participant, Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theater (September 1999)
• Gay and Lesbian Historical Society First Annual Community Art Award (May 1999)
• Irvine Fellowship in Dance (September 1998)
• Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Maverick Strain (1997)
• Irvine Barclay Theatre “Presidents Award” (1997)
• Amman Theater Festival “Outstanding Arts” Award (1997)

Recent Teaching Residencies

• Jacob’s Pillow, Becket, MA (2001)
• Columbia College, Chicago, Illinois (2001)
• Cornish School of the Arts, Seattle, Washington (fall 2000)
• Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Young Artists at Work program (summer 2000 and summer 1999)
• Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia (February 2000)
• Regents Lecturer, residency and commission, University of California, Berkeley (1999)
• Springer Cultural Center, workshop with the “Risk Takers” for at-risk high school students, Urbana, Illinois, (October 1998)
• Master Class, Movement Research, New York (September 1998)
• Workshop with the “Attic” for Gay and Lesbian high school students, William Way Community Cultural Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (September 1998)
• Residency and commission, Zenon Dance Company, Minneapolis, Minnesota (1997)
• John W. Holloway Endowed Chair, University of South Florida (1996-97)
• California State University Summer Arts Program, California State University, Humboldt (1995)
• Harvard Summer Dance Festival, Harvard University (1993-94)

Publications

• “Coming Out Again,” Dance USA Journal, Spring 1999, Vol. 16, No. 4
• “Dance Teacher Now,” article, October 1998
• “Joe Goode Performance Group 10 Year Anniversary Book,” 1996
• TheaterForum International Theater Journal, Article, September 1994

Film and Video

• Goode Travels, feature-length documentary, Julie Miller Productions (1995)
• Without a Place, Julie Miller Productions, Winner of 1992 Dance on Camera Festival Award, New York
• 29 Effeminate Gestures, Produced for “Alive from Off Center” by KQED Television, San Francisco and Twin Cities Public Television, Minneapolis. Filmed by Tim Boxell, 1989.