Joe Goode (choreographer)

Joe Goode (1951) is an American choreographer, director, performer, and writer known for creating multidimensional performance works, often about identity and interpersonal relationships in contemporary times.

Goode founded Joe Goode Performance Works in 1986. Goode is "widely known as an innovator in the field of dance for his willingness to collide movement with spoken word, song, and visual imagery."

Early life and education
Joe Goode was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1951. He graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1973.

Career
After college, Goode moved to New York to join the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In 1973 he relocated to San Francisco and joined the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.

In 1983 he premiered his first independent choreographic work Stanley in San Francisco.

A 1999 review of Gender Heros describes Goode's process, "Joe Goode based “Gender Heroes Part I” on interviews conducted with Bay Area community members from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, ranging from elderly persons and first-generation Americans to transgendered individuals and cross-dressers. This world premiere explores the social and cultural forces that influence gender, and the expectations of men and women in our communities. Through dance and spoken word, the piece uses the collected narratives to offer a glimpse into the personal journey toward one's gender identity."

SF Chronicle Arts and Culture Critic, Steven Winn, calls Goode's 2008 Wonderboy an, "achingly tender new dance theater piece . . . in one of those passages of innocent joy that Goode can conjure like no one else." He claims, "Goode's work often skates on, and over, the line of preciousness. . ."

Goode became a tenured professor of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley upon joining the faculty in 2001.

Awards

 * New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Award, 1998
 * San Francisco Isadora Duncan (“Izzie”) Award, 1998
 * Irvine Fellowship in Dance, 1998
 * Creative Capital, 2000
 * John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for choreography, 2007
 * USA Fellow, 2008
 * National Endowment for the Arts
 * California Arts Council

Creative work

 * Stanley, 1983
 * 29 Effeminate Gestures, 1987
 * The Disaster Series, 1989
 * Maverick Strain, 1996
 * Deeply There (Stories of a Neighborhood), 1998
 * Gender Heroes, 1999
 * Body Familiar, 2003
 * Grace, 2004
 * Transformations, 2006
 * Humansville, 2007
 * Wonderboy, 2008
 * Traveling Light, 2009
 * The Resilience Project
 * As We Go, 2023