Joe Goode Performance Group at Vilar Center

BEAVER CREEK – Known for shaking up the traditional barriers between genres of dance, visual arts and theatre, the San Francisco-based Joe Goode Performance Group brings its innovative dance fusion to the Vilar Center stage.

In 1979, Joe Goode began synthesizing a genre of dance-theatre that combines text, gestures and humor with his own deeply physical, high velocity dancing. His innovative style has earned the group a New York Dance and Performances Award, otherwise known as Bessies, as well as several Isadora Duncan Dance Awards (Izzies). Their current, limited-city national tour features the piece “Stay Together,” a collaboration between Goode and Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT), the composer, conductor and musical director of the San Francisco Symphony. Presented as the highlight of the company’s 20th anniversary season, “Stay Together” marks the first collaboration of the two artiss, and the first time MTT has composed music for a dance company.

After attending several of Goode’s performances, MTT became intrigued by the choreographer’s fusion of text, song, multi-media and high velocity movement. Using MTT’s song “Stay Together,” as the central musical element of the dance, the duo later found it served as a touchstone for Goode’s musical, theatrical and narrative expansion. The resulting creation of movement and sound forged intersections where language, music and dance comfortably exist together. For those that have followed Goode’s brand of theatrical wizardry over the years – and for new audiences alike – “Stay Together” is a fitting and gratifying way to mark his company’s 20th anniversary. From Goode, the program will also include a revised edition of his landmark dance-theatre work, “Deeply There (Stories of a Neighborhood).” Hailed by The New York Times as “fresh, touching and wickedly funny,” the work is Goode’s 1998 powerful and critically-praised response to the AIDS epidemic. It serves as an ideal companion piece for an evening that seeks to represent the best of 20 years of provocative dance theater.

The evening is funded in part by the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with lead funding from Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which supports performing artists and the creation of their work. Additional funding was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation. A Question and Answer session with the company will be held immediately following the performance, providing further insight into this iconic dance group’s work. Tickets are $50 and are available by calling the Vilar Center Box Office at 845-TIXS (8497).