How are you doing? No, really, are you okay? Joe Goode, the Bay Area’s preeminent maestro of dance theater, wants to know.
Working with a cadre of artists who’ve been in his Joe Goode Performance Group for decades, the choreographer presents his latest site-specific work, “Are You Okay?” at the Rincon Center downtown Thursday through Sunday Aug. 14-31, and it’s an immersive sojourn exploring the emotional fault lines running through our shaky national psyche.
Goode has often drawn inspiration directly from the locations of his productions, like 2018’s “Still Standing,” which transformed San Francisco’s historic Haas-Lilienthal House into a portal to the past or, more recently, 2021’s “Time of Change,” a canny activation of locations around Haight Ashbury.
“Are You Okay?” makes use of the Rincon Center’s huge interior space, but there’s no aerial rope work involved, despite the fact that Goode co-created the work with Melecio Estrella, artistic director of the vertical dance company Bandaloop.
With a central atrium five stories high, “the loftiness of that space is definitely something we’re using, while the other part has its own vastness, with thousands of square feet,” said Goode, professor emeritus in the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies.
“There is this sense that you can wander, but with cubbyholes and indented areas, so you get the broad view and intimate moments. That’s what I love. It’s not always about the site, like when we performed at the Haas-Lilienthal House, which was not to be denied.”
Rather than drawing inspiration from a locale, “Are You Okay?” might be the first dance theater piece riffing on a U.S. Surgeon General advisory.
At the end of 2021, with the nation still reeling from pandemic-induced sequestration, the Children’s Mental Health Report detailed a crisis of loneliness, anxiety and depression. The dire portrait resonated deeply with Goode.
“The percentages were so high, and not just with young people,” he said. “I’ve felt that in my students at Berkeley. I see it in my family. Everyone I talk to is feeling the same.”
Goode and the company talked to quite a few people while developing the piece. Conversations with residents in Project Artaud informed the production, as well as mental health services in the Mission and communities around the Joe Goode Annex provided ideas and insight during the piece’s evolution.
“We asked questions like, have you experienced a period when you were not okay?” Goode said. “Did you come up with a plan or strategy to get out of that? People talked about work, family, love and spirituality. It was easy. Ask anybody how they’re doing these days, and they will have an answer. That all found its way into the work. We’re not using any of it verbatim, though there are little bits of recorded interviews anonymously woven into the sound design.”
Deploying his trademark blend of stylized vignettes, modern dance and song, Goode is a master at evoking interior landscapes with characters seeking to find their way to solid ground.
His company includes long-time collaborators like Felipe Barrueto-Cabello, who joined the JGPG in 1996, and Marit Brook-Kothlow, a member since 1990. They’re marvelous, time-defying dancers, but they’re also actors and musicians who can inhabit a character.
“When I first came in, that was Joe’s whole thing, that dancers are not mute,” said Estrella, who joined the company in his early 20s. “They can speak and sing, with the voice serving as another dancing limb. I come from a family of singers and when I found him I realized all of this expression can exist in one world.”
Estrella’s creative world has expanded in exciting directions in recent years. He’s created works for Bandaloop that the company has performed around the world since he was appointed director of the company in 2003.
His choreography for Idina Menzel’s musical “Redwood” premiered last year at the La Jolla Playhouse, and ran for 136 shows on Broadway. Directed by Tina Landau, who also wrote the book and lyrics, the musical was inspired by anti-logging activist Julia Butterfly Hill.
Estrella grew up mostly in the North Bay, close to activists dedicated to preserving the forests, “so when I got the call about ‘Butterfly,’ I said, ‘You found the right person!’” he recalled.
“Tina Landau is from same generation as Joe, with a commitment to experimentation and new forms in theater. I didn’t know what to expect working on Broadway and she was brilliant and so kind,” he said.
In creating the score for “Are You Okay?” Goode, Etrella and the company worked closely with Ben Juodvalkis, the latest in an illustrious line of composers associated with Goode, including Beth Custer, Carla Kihlstedt, and Michael Tilson Thomas.
Goode generally avoids addressing politics directly, and is allergic to preaching and agitprop. When it comes to the mental health crisis, “Are You Okay?” isn’t about a set of policies. It’s about listening to each other and recognizing our shared vulnerability.
“I don’t have the answers to any of these questions,” he said. “What’s important is talking about it, allowing it to be real. That whatever we’re dealing with emotionally is not a dirty little secret we’re all carrying around. That was the real inspiration.”