When Joe Goode was a young boy, he loved to wrap himself up in a giant, decorative bedspread and pretend that he was the Queen of England. Goode, better known as the "bad boy of modern dance," still enjoys parading around in bedspreads pretending to be someone else, only now he does it before live audiences all across the country.
The New York Times calls his work, "Touching, and wickedly funny … [ with ] the searing ring of truth." The San Francisco Chronicle claims he is "Never boring, always surprising and utterly original … nowhere is modern dance more daring and new."
But Goode, who founded the San Francisco-based Joe Goode Performance Group in 1986, politely shrugs off such high-wattage reviews.
"Traditional dance just doesn't interest me much. But don't get me wrong, we're not precious or austere," he says, his voice taking on a mock drama-queen tone. "We're not creatures of some modern dance muse, either,"
"What we are is a group of dancers, dancing around a campfire telling the story of the events of the day. And during those moments of revelation we use masks, or songs or anything available to do the telling. Dance should be about the telling. It's the act of sharing that elevates."
The creation of Gender Heroes ( Part 1 ) and Undertaking Harry ( Part 2 ) , the two pieces that Goode's group will be performing at Columbia College March 22-24, started with seven carefully chosen words:
WHO IS THE HERO OF YOUR SEX?
"I wanted to examine how we construct ourselves in terms of gender, especially if we are gay or lesbian. How do we find the man or the woman within? Who are our heroes that we pattern ourselves after?"
Goode conducted several interviews in the Bay Area based on these questions, and the responses, he says, were not what he expected.
"A lot of people crossed gender lines to find their heroes. Some chose fictional characters. Some chose cartoon characters. But the most common response were the people who said they didn't have a hero because they couldn't find one that was right for them."
Thus, the question that is posed before the audience at the beginning of each performance of Gender Heroes is, "What if the stories we hear are not the stories we live?"
Told in a series of linked vignettes integrating dance, performance art and good ole fashioned storytelling, Gender Heroes features a motley crew of characters that includes a pair of young convicts escaping through the Nevada desert, three unmarried, sexually ambiguous sisters who run a farm, and Goode's own personal account of a boy punished for coveting his sister's cowgirl skirt. Throw into the mix assorted cow utters, three-legged stools and "major" cowboy chaps and it's easy to see why the Chronicle proclaims Goode's work as "never boring."
"I will literally drag in the kitchen sink, if I need to, to tell the story," explains Goode. "Humor and pathos are not mutually exclusive. I think the audience is more able to experience the more tender, more fragile moments [ of the piece ] after moments of humor."
Gender Heroes' companion piece is Undertaking Harry, a work inspired by Harry Hay, the 87-year-old revolutionary gay activist who founded the Mattachine Society, and later, co-founded the Radical Faeries. But theatre goers with admittedly short attention spans, do not be alarmed. Goode emphatically describes Undertaking Harry as anything BUT a history lesson in gay activism.
"We don't totally go into Hay's history or all of his accomplishments. We tried that, but we found that it was too dry. And it let [ audience members ] off the hook, because they didn't have to feel anything. I want them to feel the pain and feel the emotional struggles of Hay more than anything."
Hay himself attended the show's opening night and promptly proclaimed Goode "the maestro."
"He loved it," says Goode with obvious delight.
"I ask a question in the first piece [ Gender Heroes ] that I hadn't totally answered myself: who is the hero of my sex? At the time I didn't have a hero, but then I remembered Harry Hay. He was such a courageous and brave man and I remember reading about him in my teens … if it hadn't been for Hay, my life would have been completely different. I don't think I would have made it through my teenage years [ without his example ] because I was such a depressed, budding young homo."
Goode hopes that the show will lead audiences into their own "interior terrain" where they will ponder such questions as "Am I living the life I want to live?" and "Am I living the gender role that is right for me?"
"I'm not about confronting people and saying you're not doing a good enough job with your life," he quickly adds. "I'm more about creating the kind of window that people will, hopefully, want to look through."
_____
The Joe Goode Performance Group appears at The Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 S. Michigan Ave. March 22-24 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20 general admission. Student and senior discounts are available. Call ( 312 ) 344-8300.
