Philistine: Joe Goode Performance Group.
We saw MTT conduct Mahler's Symphony No. 8 on Saturday, and ran into him again the day after -- he was the composer of the music for the first half of Joe Goode's new show, and Sunday was the first night his schedule let him attend Stay Together, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
The music he wrote is actually the opposite of the work he conducted the night before: it is pretty minimalist, with very simple melodic lines, underscored with a few bass notes here and there and some percussive boings and quinks here and there, all of it with that MIDI sound quality of 80s synthesizers. "That's what this piece is about," did he mumble before he ran away, when we noted the economy of style as compared to the night before. We did not mean it in a bad way!
Joe Goode's performance fits the music, however. The set-up is pretty economical too, with a bare stage, except for two screens and two video cameras facing two chairs. Dancers move in the wide empty space in between, while one of them, miked up, shares intimate details with us while sitting on the chair. Intimate details about aging alone and relationships, about sexual fantasies, displayed for us in a humorous tone.
Photo credit RJ Muna, of a previous Joe Goode Performance Group show
We are no Joan Acocella, so we have no frame of reference to situate the choregraphy, other than to say we enjoyed it, and that all the performers seemed technically excellent. The work seems to be about intimacy, and how digital technologies bring out an appearance thereof, yet also an unbridgeable divide. We have heard this spiel before, but the take here was fresh and challenging. The close-ups of the performers on the large screens highlight details of faces typically reserved for private conversations, not the stage - a little bout of bad skin, for instance. Yet, the closeness of the screen keeps our focus away from the real flesh-and-skin dancers performing at the same time. We are closer to the virtual.
The broken intimacy is perfectly illustrated by Joe Goode sitting on the back chair, looking up, and Melecio Estrella, in front looking down. The two performers would be totally disconnected, if not for their images on the screens longingly looking for each other: the relationship between the characters is virtual, each of them isolated in their own world. As one performer says: are they alone? No. Are they together? Maybe.
Joe Goode himself, casually approachable and personable in the introduction of the show (in essence, "Thank you guys for supporting my company 20 years!" Happy anniversary, Joe!) and in the Q&A afterwards, performs this aloof and slightly smug character who keeps his distance with the audience. The choregraphy emphasizes this inability to really connect: a repeated movement is that of a point blank punch lunged from one character to the other, which misses. Or, similarly, an embrace which catches only air. One dancer will first perform a movement alone, then repeat it, while another will try to insert himself into that sequence: as if togetherness was here unrequited, as if togetherness was composed of two distinct solitudes.
The way we describe it, it sounds a bit heavy, but Joe Goode keeps the show light with constant humourous touches, verbal jokes, funny situations and visual pranks.
Stay Together was only the first part of the show, a revival of Goode's award-winning Deeply There (Stories of a neighborhood) completes the second half. Deeply There narrates the emotions running through a Castro community as one of them, Ben, sight unseen, is dying from AIDS. Given the potential pathos of the set-up, the piece keeps it light without being disrespectful, and Goode should be saluted for pulling out this feat.
The piece opens with the most amazing piece of dancing we've witnessed: a duo between Joe Goode and a kid, Joshua Rauchwerger, who could be ten year old. It choregraphes a child playing with his dad, keeping the playfulness of it, but adding a formal sense of esthetics to it. When two adults dance together, maybe it says more about us than we wish to disclose, but we often sense an erotic and/or pugilistic undercurrent; while this little number was so pure that it revealed the distillated essence of the movement and the simple joy that dancing can bring.
The crowd pleaser of Deeply There is "Today's Jackie O d\Day," a mindlessly fun ensemble number which breaks the dreariness of Ben's wake. The whole troupe decked in the same Chanel outfit in multiple colors impersonates Jackie O to a campy little ditty which only lyrics are "Oh! Oh! Jackie Oooooh!" With the 25th anniversary of the HIV epidemic this month, the piece is unfortunately still very timely and relevant.
Joe Goode Performance Group
Three more performances of Stay Together
Friday 6/9, 8pm; Saturday 6/10, 8pm; Sunday 6/11, 7pm.
Info here