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(2002, Duet, 12 minutes)

“I was across the street from the World Trade Center when the attacks of 9/11 occurred. When the first plane hit, I felt it and heard it and smelled it. The jolt hit me in the core of my being. Subsequently, my family and I were displaced from our home for months and experienced great upheaval. As a human being, I was numb. As an artist, I went back to the studio and began to feel my way back to the world. Making Good Girl Daddy was excruciating and exhilarating at once. I needed a safe place to put the experience so that I could begin to look at it. Yet the central image in the dance became about not wanting to look, in fact, to look away forever, to make it not so. When my young daughter is afraid or nervous, she chants to herself, ‘good girl, good girl,’ and she extends this comfort to anyone who seems to need it, ‘good girl daddy,’ she’ll say.” – Keely Garfield

Created in the aftermath of 9/11, the piece is inspired by images of flight and fright. The manic musical score by Phillip Johnston collides and ultimately commiserates with the dance’s lunatic blend of urgency, despair and hope.

“Offering such temporary distractions as a bullfight tango, they dance at an aerobic pace through a vaudeville act that’s theirs for life.” The Village Voice

“A duet between a girl/woman and her angel/idea of daddy/stuffed animal that provides comfort…humorous whimsy and a strange fun unreality. Goldhuber faces Garfield with two fingers tracing the lines between his eyes and hers as if to say “stick with me, look right here, don’t lose focus.” Whatever she faces, he will be there to guide and support…you are left wanting for the comfort so deftly called up by the performers.” Lesbian & Gay New York


Premiere: The Duke on 42nd Street (New York, NY), February 20, 2002
Commissioned by the 92nd Street Y New Works in Dance Fund, and generously supported by the Jerome Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance and by the Live Music for Dance Program of the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, administered by the American Music Center. Some of the material for Good Girl Daddy was created in studio space donated by The Ensemble Studio Theatre and the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center.