Eric Yake Kenagy visiting artist program

Goat Island Performance Group
(Spring 2004)

Goat Island is a collaborative performance group consisting of Karen Christopher, Matthew Goulish, Lin Hison (director), Mark Jeffery, CJ Mitchell (manager), Bryan Saner and Lito Walkey.

At Goshen College, Goat Island will do a collaborative reading from 2002 -- the Year Long Writing Project. They will also conduct a workshop with Art and Theater students about their process.

Goat Island performances are often set in spaces closer to the viewers than traditional stage, using a combination of dance-like and everyday movements. With a historical or contemporary issue as a central theme, they use their bodies in time and space to create images that change the way viewers think about the issue. The process makes extreme demands on the performers physically and challenges the viewers perceptually.

Goat Island has completed seven works since their founding in 187: Soldier, Child, Tortured Man (1987); We Got a Date (1989); Can't take Johnny to the Funeral (1991); It's Shifting, Hank (1993); How Dear to Me the Hour When Daylight Dies (1996); The Sea & Poison (1998); and It's an Earthquake in My Heart (2001). Works can take two years of research, writing and choreography with each member of the group contributing to its development. Goat Island talks about this process of development as a conversation. The eighth piece, When will the September Roses Bloom?, is scheduled for completion in 2004. Goat Island has toured the United States, England, Scotland, Wales, Belgium, Switzerland, Croatia, Germany and Canada. They have received six grants from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as from numerous other arts and educational organizations. Goat Island Summer Schools are three week studies in performance, collaboration documentation and research. They are given annually at the School o the Art Institute in chicago and at The University of Bristol.

Previous Eric Yake Kenagy visiting artists:

• Robert Ebendorf, jewelry, 2002
• Miriam Schapiro, painter and other media, New York, 2001
• Ken Heibert, graphic designer, Philadelphia, 1999
• Mary Ellen Mark, photographer, New York, 1998
• Hollis Sigler, painter and printmaker, Chicago, 1998
• Franz Schulze, Art Critic, Chicago, 1996
• Toshiko Takaezu, Ceramist, Elizabethtown, New Jersey, 1996
• Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Painter, New Mexico, 1995
• Robert Blackburn, Printmaker, New York, 1994
• Ruth Weisburg, Painter, Los Angeles, 1993
• Richard Hunt, Sculptor, Chicago, 1992
• Deborah Remington, Painter, New York, 1990
• James Melchert, Conceptualist, Berkeley, 1989
• Ruth Duckworth, Ceramist, Chicago, 1987,

Visiting artists archive page.