Joe Goode Performance Group Announces The Inaugural Gush Festival

Joe Goode Performance Group (JGPG) is pleased to announce GUSH, its inaugural festival of contemporary dance located at the Joe Goode Annex. Featuring works by Bay Area companies GERALDCASELDANCE and NAKA Dance Theater as well as Joe Goode Performance Group, GUSH runs for two weeks with a host of additional free classes and other public events, May 15 - 31. Single tickets at $20 will go on sale March 9 at joegoode.org/gush or by phone at 415-561-6565.

"All the artists in this festival exude a depth of passion and commitment to an idea - in whatever mode of performance they take on," said JGPG Artistic Director Joe Goode. "As we prepare to present work that is wholly and unapologetically itself, we have a lot to gush over."

Six double-feature shows anchor a program of free community events including six movement classes, four lectures/conversations, a day of informal showings by local dance-makers and an opening night celebration. "We envision GUSH as a major new platform for close encounters with dance-making and dance-makers, and a chance to be expansive in our invitation to attendees to engage with a creative process," said JGPG Executive Director Michelle Lynch Reynolds. For the complete schedule of events, visit the festival's calendar at joegoode.org/gush.

GERALDCASELDANCE | Trinkets and Patterns

May 22, 24, 29, 31

Fridays at 8:30 p.m.

Sundays at 5 p.m.

Acclaimed postmodern dancer and choreographer Gerald Casel revisits and rethinks Trinkets and Patterns, which premiered last year as part of San Francisco Trolley Dances. A work created in collaboration with experimental composer Guillermo Galindo, Trinkets and Patterns features a quartet of dancers, including Casel. Children's toys, together with Galindo's richly patterned score, offer "hints of narrative" and a "sense of wonder."

Born in the Philippines and raised in California, Casel received a BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School in 1991 and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2007. He has danced in the companies of Michael Clark, Sungsoo Ahn, Stanley Love, Zvi Gotheiner, Russell Dumas, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Lar Lubovitch and Stephen Petronio, and is an assistant professor of dance at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

NAKA Dance Theater | BUSCARTE (Searching for You)

May 23, 24, 30, 31

Saturdays at 7 p.m.

Sundays at 6:30 p.m.

NAKA Dance Theater creates interdisciplinary performance works that explore contemporary socio-political and environmental issues. BUSCARTE, which premiered in 2017, reflects on the 43 students who were forcibly disappeared in Guerrero, Mexico in 2014. An inquiry into the ever-widening circles of trauma among the communities impacted by the "disappeared" or "desaparecidos," BUSCARTE is an elegy, a cathartic dance, a tapestry of motions and emotions in a quest to make visible that which cannot be looked at directly.

Founded in 2001 by José Navarrete and Debby Kajiyama, NAKA has created work with communities in San Francisco's Tenderloin and East Oakland, addressing issues including racial profiling, displacement, state brutality and domestic violence. Their work shines a light on stories that are hidden in the shadows through a collaborative process that encourages self-determination and healing. NAKA and its founders have been honored with residencies and fellowships from The Yard, Djerassi, CHIME Across Borders and ODC Theater.

Joe Goode Performance Group | Resilience Project

May 23, 24, 30, 31

Fridays at 7 p.m.

Saturdays at 8:30 p.m.

Resilience Project is an ongoing creative initiative that began in 2013, in a residency with the Institute for Health and Well-Being of Military and their Families at Kansas State University. It has since seen iterations in Chico (CA), Chicago (IL), Washington DC and San Francisco. The project involves periodic residencies in which Goode and the company interview veterans dealing with issues of PTSD and trauma, then developing their individual responses and stories about resilience into a moving new work to honor and give visibility to their lived experiences.

For the performances at GUSH, JGPG will continue a partnership with the Downtown Clinic of the San Francisco Veterans Association, offering eight weeks of its signature Movement for Humans class. It is through the relationships built during these classes that JGPG invites vets to be interviewed, their stories then woven into the ever-evolving performance. "[Resilience Project] unspooled with a light touch and zero melodrama, shedding light on intimate experiences with occasional glints of wit" (The Washington Post).

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