We last saw Joe Goode Performance Group at the Ohio Theater in 2007. It was, as we recall, a well-attended and well-received program and we reflected at the time that AIDS activist Goode was one of only a few choreographers we could think of who were still doing overtly political work. Would the 2010 performance prove culturally and politically subversive? We could only hope!
Judging from last Saturday’s performance at the Ohio, Goode’s hilarious subversion of cultural paradigms remains his forte, and in that sense his work remains political. But references to the overtly political – AIDS, gay marriage, gays in the military, gay adoption, homophobia as a touchstone of right-wing politics – were completely absent from Saturday’s program and in its place was an emphasis on Goode’s other themes, empathy and a plea for simple acceptance of the homosexual citizen’s humanity.
Things got off to a chatty start with Brian Bethune, Dean of Tri-C Creative Arts and spokesman for Tri-C Presents. Bethune was soon joined by Goode himself who concluded the introduction with his own acappella performance of an original song (“It’s a country western song so brace yourselves.”) whose lyrics Goode had mined from a John Wayne movie. In this declaration of love cum marriage proposal Goode sings the lines of the starlet enamored of Wayne’s pistolero. Hilarious, outrageous, and alluding to hackneyed versions of deeply felt emotions, Goode has written and performed, if not the perfect country western song, the perfect parody of one.
(Goode has reached back across the decades and reworked old movies to comic effect before, we understand from our reading, perhaps most successfully in his MAVERICK STRAIN (1996), a send up of the Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe swan song, THE MISFITS (1961).)
The evening of subversion continued with 29 EFFEMINATE GESTURES (1987), seen by many including Goode himself as the choreographer’s seminal work.
As Goode describes the creation of 29 EFFEMINATE GESTURES in a blog, “The big moment was realizing that on some level I was effeminate and that I was going to show it in front of lots of people. My own fear and self loathing in that moment of “knowing” that some of my gestures identified me (at least in this culture) as a sissy was really revealing and taught me a lot.”
Saturday’s performance, or at least the current tour, marked another big moment in that Goode has turned performance of this solo over to a dancer other than himself, Melecio Estrella.
On Saturday’s performance, Estrella emerged suddenly from the audience at the tail end of Goode’s song. Dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit and channeling a convincing imitation of Tourette Syndrome, Estrella repeated, “He’s a good guy,” over and over as, tic by tic, he made his way onto the stage.
We’ve read that 29 EFFEMINATE GESTURES has not been performed since 1999, but Estrella’s performance of the core phrase, a series of humorous flutters and minces, seemed familiar. Had this been performed at the Ohio in 2007?
Sandwiched between the operation of power tools, Estrella’s performance included spoken word (“If you feel too much…”) and an alternately campy and virtuosic dance to recorded percussion in the company’s default style, something we’d describe as contemporary dance influenced by capoeira.
The evening’s piece de resistance, WONDERBOY (2008), Goode’s collaboration with puppeteer Basil Twist, takes the form of a memoir in which the Wonderboy character, embodied by Twist’s bunraku-style puppet and given voice by the dancer / actors of the company, tells the story of his early awakening to his sexual identity / homosexuality and his eventual discovery of the importance of his ability to empathize, to feel what others are feeling.
We were reminded of Yukio Mishima’s confessional novel, a thinly disguised memoir, CONFESSIONS OF A MASK.
WONDERBOY began with the title character looking out a window. He is animated by 2 dancer / actors who stand beside him in full view; he is given voice by another dancer / actor who stands in full view at a microphone. As Wonderboy describes his excess of feeling about the world outside his window, the company variously embodies that world.
Much of the dancing that Wonderboy sees from his window is in the company’s contemporary / capoeira style. It includes some gender-bending – the women occasionally take on what are usually masculine partnering duties, lifting and manipulating their male partners – and the men often partner each other – but it is living proof that Goode can create watchable non-literal choreography (in the footsteps of his early mentor, Merce Cunningham) and his dancers are attractive, compelling performers.
But Wonderboy sees another kind of dancing from his window. In one vignette, one of the men emerges dressed as a cheerleader. He / she is (hilariously) accosted by an imaginary seducer and flees. In another vignette, a squad of cheerleaders deliver a homophobic chant in which “sodomite” and “queer” are 2 of the milder insults hurled.
In keeping with Goode’s own description of his work as “musical theater” both kinds of dancing (read “musical numbers”) are cued by Wonderboy’s speeches.
If all of this sounds promising so far, we’re sorry to say that despite our enjoyment of Goode’s performers, his choreography, and his subversive humor, WONDERBOY proved something of a disappointment. For us, neither the score (composed by Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi) nor the script provided a satisfying dramatic arc.
2, 3, and eventually all 6 performers animated Twist’s Wonderboy puppet. Versatile as they all are as dancer / actors, none of them gave the Wonderboy character more than a bland movement personality.
Goode’s interest in an excess of empathy, a boy who feels too much, are his perennial themes, but for us they’re insufficient here to sustain WONDERBOY. We’d refer him to Mishima’s CONFESSIONS OF A MASK for a successful treatment of a similar theme.
Joe Goode Performance Group appeared at Ohio Theater on Saturday, 3/13/2010. http://www.TriCPresents.com
From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas. Elsa and Vic are both longtime Clevelanders. Elsa is a landscape designer. She studied ballet as an avocation for 2 decades. Vic has been a dancer and dance teacher for most of his working life, performing in a number of dance companies in NYC and Cleveland. They write about dance as a way to learn more and keep in touch with the dance community. E-mail them at vicnelsaATearthlink.net.