SAN FRANCISCO, March 4, 2007—Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is pleased to present Humansville, a world premiere performance installation by acclaimed Bay Area dance theater company Joe Goode Performance Group on Thu, May 31; Sat, June 2; and Thu, June 7; Sat, June 9, 2007. Choreographer Joe Goode was recently named a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow. Following their 20th Anniversary, Joe Goode Performance Group shifts from presenting dance theater on a proscenium stage to bring audiences on an intimate journey through an installation exploring the hidden codes and meanings of human expression—both what can separate us, and connect us. Utilizing its celebrated fusion of theater, humor and high velocity dance, the company collaborates with video artist Austin Forbord and renowned composer/performer Joan Jeanrenaud to create an immersive and deeply moving theatrical experience in YBCA's Forum.

"YBCA was very excited when Joe came to us with an idea to do something completely unlike his work of the last several years. The core of our support for Bay Area artists is to enable them to do just that—move in an artistic direction they might not otherwise be able to do. Joe Goode Performance Group's highly anticipated site-specific work Humansville is the perfect final installment of our Deeply Personal Series. JGPG's physically and emotionally resonant work communicates with an uncommon wit and candor about the frailty and enduring strength of the human spirit," said Ken Foster, executive director for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Humansville is a collaboration between Joe Goode Performance Group, video artist Austin Forbord and acclaimed composer/cellist Joan Jeanrenaud. For each performance space within the Forum, together they invent different visual, emotional and sonic landscapes, wherein the video element works in tandem with movement, music and storytelling to bring the viewer into wildly different personal moments and worlds. Audiences will roam freely; invited to question and explore modes of perception and expression as the different rooms are discovered. Jeanrenaud's haunting score will be performed live; audible throughout the space as she travels from room to room on a moving platform.

With Humansville, Goode creates a 'human zone' where audience members get up-close and personal with both the familiar and the unfamiliar, to investigate what leads us to regard other human beings and ways of being as 'the other,' and challenging our own ability to empathize. Armed with his uncanny ability to weave stories and movement together into a seamless and rapturous whole, Goode dares us to look away, striving to create bridges of communication and connection through this most intimate live performance.

ABOUT JOE GOODE PERFORMANCE GROUP
The Joe Goode Performance Group, formed in 1986, has toured throughout the US as well as Canada, Europe, South America, the Middle East and Africa. Joe Goode is known as a master teacher; his summer workshops in "felt performance" attract participants from around the world. Goode has joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley in the department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies.

ABOUT JOE GOODE
Joe Goode is a choreographer, writer and director whose first concern as an artist is to provide a "deeply felt, profoundly human experience" in the theater. He is widely known as an innovator in the field of dance for his willingness to collide movement with spoken word, song and visual imagery. His play, Body Familiar, commissioned by the Magic Theatre in 2003, received critical acclaim. Joe Goode's work has been recognized with numerous awards and prizes including a New York Dance and Performance Award ("Bessie"), and several Isadora Duncan Dance Awards ("Izzies"). Goode has also been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council and the James Irvine Foundation. He has been honored with awards for excellence by the American Council on the Arts, the Business Arts Council/San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, and the "Heritage" award from the California Dance Educators Association. In 2007 Goode was awarded the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. Goode's work has been commissioned by dance companies across America. His performance/installation works have been commissioned by the Fowler Museum of Natural History, Krannert Art Museum, the Capp Street Project, the M.H. de Young Museum and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

ABOUT AUSTIN FORBORD
Austin Forbord is a video artist, filmmaker, and choreographer. He was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Award for performance in 2001 and visual design in 2003. Austin has performed with a diverse group of San Francisco based companies including his own company Rapt, as well as ADW, Scott Wells & Dancers, On-Site Dance Co., Kunst Stoff and Sara Shelton Mann/Contraband. He has created video backdrops for performances by Joe Goode Performance Group, Robert Moses-Kin, Sara Shelton Mann/Contraband, Stephen Pelton, Erling Wold, Liss Fain Dance, Kunst-Stoff, and Motion-Lab. Rapt is also a film company, and Austin recently finished directing and editing dance films for Anna Halprin and Deborah Hull. Rapt is responsible for the critically acclaimed full length documentary, "Artists in Exile: A Story of Modern Dance in San Francisco."

ABOUT JOAN JEANRENAUD
Joan Jeanrenaud was born and raised on a small farm outside Memphis, Tennessee. She started playing the cello at age 11 and began studying with Peter Spurbeck the following year. As a teenager, Jeanrenaud, who was the principal cellist of the Memphis Youth Symphony, developed an interest in contemporary music. She continued her studies with Fritz Magg at Indiana University, where she was a founding member of the IU Contemporary Music Ensemble. A highlight of her college years was her participation as a Fellow at Tanglewood, where she was principal cellist with the Festival Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein. After earning a Bachelor of Music degree at Indiana University, she lived in Geneva, Switzerland to study with Pierre Fournier.

At age 22 Jeanrenaud joined the Kronos Quartet and relocated to San Francisco, California. For twenty years she worked with hundreds of composers and musicians such as John Cage, Terry Riley, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Joan Armatrading, Tony Williams, David Byrne, John Zorn and many others.

Jeanrenaud left Kronos in 1999 to pursue different artistic directions including solo projects and collaborations with a diverse group of artists, such as Hamza El Din, Pamela Z, Fred Frith, Eiko and Koma, Tom Bonauro and Yo-Yo Ma. She is currently exploring many musical arenas, including composition, improvisation, electronics, video and multi-disciplinary performance. Several composers have recently written or are currently writing new works for Jeanrenaud, including Terry Riley, Karen Tanaka, Paul Dresher, Annie Gosfield, Kevin Volans and Cenk Ergun. Jeanrenaud was an Artist-In-Residence at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in the 2000/2001 season where she developed an evening length solo multi-media work, Metamorphosis, which received its world premiere at the Walker Art Center in May, 2001. Also during her residency she developed and performed Ice Cello, a four hour installation piece inspired by the work of Fluxus artist Charlotte Moorman. For more info, go to http://www.jjcello.org/.

ABOUT YBCA
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is the Bay Area's premier venue for contemporary visual art, performance and film/video. Located in the heart of downtown San Francisco, YBCA celebrates our area's cultural diversity with dynamic arts programs presented in world-class venues.

Local, national and international dance, theater and music performances are scheduled year-round in the Forum and Theater as part of our YBCA Performance series. Audiences are encouraged to subscribe for four or more performances for discounts of up to 40%.

Overlapping contemporary art exhibitions are scheduled year-round in our galleries and evening film/video screenings are programmed throughout the year in our Screening Room. Public Programs explore YBCA's exciting range of exhibitions, performances and film/video programs. For tickets and information, call 415.978.ARTS (2787) or visit www.ybca.org.

ABOUT YBCA PERFORMANCE
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts launches its third complete season of performance with contemporary dance, theater and music. YBCA Performance 06-07 subscription packages are available when you purchase the same number of tickets for four or more performances (you'll get 40% off each ticket.)

YBCA'S BIG IDEAS
Programs in the 06-07 Season are organized around three thematic areas that emerged as YBCA's curators considered artists' work, here and abroad. These three thematic threads continue and overlap throughout the year in exhibitions, performances, and film and video programs. The Big Ideas this season are: Deeply Personal, Worlds Apart, and Medium as Message.

ABOUT BIG IDEA: DEEPLY PERSONAL
All art is deeply personal, but some artists have an intense desire to share their own very individual stories. And oddly enough, art is sometimes the most universal when it is the most personal—reaching and connecting us in truly extraordinary ways. In a world divided by ideological rifts, recognizing the points where we do connect becomes more crucial than ever. The artists in this series reject mass media, mass culture, mass anything, in favor of their own simply honest, impeccably forthright, idiosyncratic and often maverick insights.

FUNDING

YBCA Performance 06-07 is made possible in part by:
The Columbia Foundation
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Additional Funding for YBCA Performance 06-07:
The Grace Trust; Hilton San Francisco; The Marriot; New England Foundation for the Arts: National Dance Project; Zellerbach Family Foundation and Members of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

YBCA PERFORMANCE 06-07 MEDIA SPONSOR:
San Francisco Magazine

Joe Goode Performance Group and the creation of Humansville have been generously funded by Grants for the Arts/The San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation, LEF Foundation, Bernard Osher Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, and Altria Group, Inc.

Click here for performance and ticket information.

Press Contact: Adriane Lee
415.321.1307
alee@YBCA.org