Choreographer, writer and director Joe Goode is one of only five dance artists to receive a 2008 United States Artist Fellowship. Goode is known for integrating spoken word, song and visual imagery in his dance theater works. In addition to creating dance works and performance installations, he has written a play, Body Familiar, that was produced by San Francisco’s Magic Theatre and directed an opera, Transformations, for the San Francisco Opera Center. His dance theater work has been commissioned by Pennsylvania Ballet, Zenon Dance Company, Dance Alloy Theater and AXIS Dance Company, among others, and his company, Joe Goode Performance Group, formed in 1986. In 2007, Goode received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is currently on faculty at UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies.
“Artists drive our nation’s cultural life and give voice to who we are and where we’re headed,” Susan V. Berresford, USA board chair and former president of the Ford Foundation, stated. “Many of this country’s two million artists struggle to make ends meet and, particularly in this challenging economic climate, it is essential to invest in our nation’s finest creative voices.”
The USA Fellows program provides direct support for artists by annually awarding fifty unrestricted grants of $50,000 to artists of all disciplines from across the country. The founding of the program in 2005 was prompted by the Urban Institute’s breakthrough study, Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structures for U.S. Artists, which found that while 96% of Americans appreciate the arts, only 27% believe that artists contribute to the good of society. In addition, the study discovered that the median reported income for artists from their artistic work was only $5,000 and that more than half of America’s two million artists pay for their own health insurance.
The USA Fellowships for 2008 include five in Architecture and Design; four in Crafts and
Traditional Arts; five in Dance; nine in Literature (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry); six in Media (film and video); six in Music; five in Theater Arts; and 10 in Visual Arts.
This year’s honorees include freejazz pioneer Muhal Richard Abrams (New York); conceptual artist Michael Asher (Los Angeles); musician and Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man (San Diego); playwright and hip-hop theater performer Will Power (New York); installation artist Kara Walker (New York); experimental architect Douglas Garofalo (Chicago); traditional sweetgrass basket weaver Mary Jackson (Johns Island, South Carolina); legendary tap dancer Dianne Walker (Boston); Faulkner Award-winning novelist and short story writer Barry Hannah (Oxford, Mississippi); and independent filmmaker William Greaves (New York), known as “the dean of African American film.”
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