Joe Goode (choreographer)


Joe Goode 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."
San Francisco 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 was a professor in Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley for 23 years, retiring in 2024.
In 2025, he premiered the immersive theater work Are You Okay? at the Rincon Center in San Francisco.
Lily Janiak, the San Francisco Chronicle's theater critic, wrote of the production: "In immersive theater, perennial problems include directing spectators’ gaze and making sure everyone can see everything in a space not built with sightlines in mind. Here, Joe Goode Performance Group dispatches those obstacles with the economy and elegance of sound and light, as well as with rolling platforms. They’re mini elevated stages, but they’re also like boats adrift at sea, emphasizing characters’ isolation and need to connect."

Awards

Creative work

Stanley, 198329 Effeminate Gestures, 1987The Disaster Series, 1989Maverick Strain, 1996Deeply There , 1998Gender Heroes, 1999Body Familiar, 2003Grace, 2004Transformations, 2006Humansville, 2007Wonderboy, 2008Traveling Light, 2009The Resilience ProjectAs We Go, 2023
  • ''Are You Okay?, 2025''