GOAT ISLAND is one of America's most passionate, political and provocative performance groups. Their Work often reflects the turbulence in contemporary life in America and the contrasting relative stability of the country's relationship with the rest of the world, where it continues to dominate economically, culturally and militarily. GOAT ISLAND have restisted participation in this domination, making them suspect and marginal. Perhaps because of this, the company feels a kinship with people who have no established place or status in society, the people whose deaths do not count and are not counted. "lt's Shifting Hank" (1993), their fourth work, addresses themes generated by the question 'Why were you in pain in such a beautiful place?'. It presents radical intolerance as a repressive response to illness. The performance combines movement sequences with post-punk rock music and lexis drawn from films such as 'To Sir With Love' and from the pro-Fascist Radio Rome broadcasts of the American poet Ezra Pound to explore mortality, eroticism and the human gesture of care. The performance builds in urgency, creating complex anti-dance choreography that pushes the endurance level of the performers to the point of collapse. GOAT ISLAND takes risks, sets its own pace and refuses to fit anywhere familiar. Literature which "changes our lives" does so because it stands so ruthlessly outside the norm, we have no choice but to create a new place for it. Perhaps this is why no one quite knows how to characterize GOAT ISLAND. Their work demands a new category which takes ils life and memory from dance, gymnastics, theatre, water polo, performance and spectacle. So, appropriately, when performed in Chicago, the work takes place in a gymnasium. What space could be malleable enough without too readily being identified as a theatrical or dance venue ? What space could be reconfigured to accommodate each new piece - to reposition the audience.