'Wonderboy' keeps everyone on their toes
Robert Hurwitt, Chronicle Theater Critic

Thursday, June 5, 2008

It's always a major event when Joe Goode premieres a new work. Since he formed his own company in 1980, while a principal dancer with Margaret Jenkins, he has pioneered a form of dance theater that combines movement with dialogue or monologues, and visual imagery and sculptural props. The Joe Goode Performance Group regularly tours throughout the United States and internationally.

DANCE THEATER REVIEW
Joe Goode's 'Wonderboy' - joy as dance, puppetry
Steven Winn, Chronicle Arts and Culture Critic

Monday, June 9, 2008

Expect no crime-stopping stunts or feats of super-human strength from "Wonderboy." Played by a puppet, and a particularly inert one at that, the title character of Joe Goode's achingly tender new dance theater piece at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is all but paralyzed by his hypersensitized feelings. Daylight, bell sounds, a boy passing by on the street all set him off. "All I do is weep and tremble," quivers Wonderboy, in a performer's half-strangled voice miked to sound a bit like Peter Lorre's.

Greater Goode
Puppet body, dancing soul in Joe Goode's "Wonderboy," hard drinking hookers in "Maverick Strain"
BY RITA FELCIANO
Wednesday June 11, 2008
Actors are advised to avoid sharing the stage with kids and dogs because they steal the show. Maybe puppets should be included. Joe Goode's hero in Wonderboy is a not-quite-three-foot concoction of wood, plaster, and cloth. He is adorable and you can't take your eyes off him. Master puppeteer Basil Twist gave him his body; Goode and his dancers gave him a soul.


With this world premiere Goode has created one of his most poetic works in years. It is not to be missed. He has done so with five new dancers who seem to have inspired choreography as richly physical as any he has done. The piece's floating lifts, wrestling holds, and tumbling rolls looked spontaneous but were finely shaped. A male-female duet spoke of tortuous relationships with fury and compassion; a quartet for four bare-chested males came across as erotic and tender.