A world premiere of Nobody Lives Here Now highlights the 30th-anniversary celebration of choreographer, writer, and director Joe Goode and the Joe Goode Performance Group. The event, presented in association with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, takes place June 22–24 at the YBCA Theater.
The new work is described as “a poetic fable that mines questions of identity, aging, and disappearance as part of the fragile human condition. The piece tells the story of a fantastical world where the things that anchor us — home, culture, people — rapidly shift and erode, and the characters find themselves faced with sudden transformation.”
The Thalea String Quartet, resident ensemble at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, will perform the classical music score. David Szlasa provides the original set and video design. Company dancers performing include Felipe Barrueto-Cabello, Marit Brook-Kothlow, Melecio Estrella, Andrew Ward, Patricia West, and Molly Katzman. Special appearances by original company member Liz Burritt and guest performer James Graham complete the roster.
Rounding out the program as a retrospective of choreographer Joe Goode’s three decades of mind-expanding work are some of his most significant pieces, including Remembering the Pool at the Best Western, Wonderboy, What the Body Knows, Grace, The Rambler, and Small Experiments in Song and Dance.
Tickets are available online at the YBCA ticket page.
Goode has established an international reputation as an innovative, multidisciplinary creator who melds dance and motion with theater, spoken word, and visual imagery. On his website, he describes of the goals of his creative process:
The challenge is to find the velocity and force in the movement and yet still retain its intimate, conversational quality. My interest in “human scale” extends beyond an interest in an expanded movement vocabulary, however. I am equally interested in the texture of the human voice and the effect it has on movement. Since my early days as a choreographer, I have been trying to forge some territory where dance and language/sound could co-exist.
The Joe Goode Performance Group, formed in 1986, tours regularly throughout the U.S., and has toured internationally to Canada, Europe, South America, Africa, and the Middle East.
