Music theater is in Michael Tilson Thomas' blood, stemming from a heritage possibly going back several generations before his famous grandfather, Boris Thomashefsky. Music theater, in the form of opera, is an MTT forte, even if that's not fully appreciated yet, as relatively few have heard him conduct in the genre. But in the adjacent world of dance, MTT has not made his mark. Sorry to say, that's true even after his debut tonight as the composer for a dance piece. His sub-minimalist contribution to the opening of the Joe Goode Performance Group's 20th season in the Yerba Buena Theater was meager in quantity and quality - even if the publicity about the MTT-Goode collaboration helped a good cause. "Sub-minimalist" is not a value judgement; it's a statement of fact. For all but the finale of the 40-minute "Stay Together," there was *no* music beyond a few disjointed chords, a percussive note here and there, and meager, unimportant sound effects. Were you not apprised of the MTT connection, you'd never peruse the program, looking for the composer, so peripheral, almost imperceptible was the "music." Something slightly different occurred during the last 5-6 minutes, when a tentative jazz riff, a compulsive marimba ostinato accompanied the dance. Too little, too late to qualify for a true Opus One. The work itself, of course, is another story. Both typical and best-ever, "Stay Together" is Goode's usual multimedia expression of hilarious angst, a wonderfully entertaining piece about the issues of staying together vs. falling apart or being alone. Against Erik Flatmo's Rotko-inspired set, Austin Forbord videography mixes live and taped images, the performers reciting (and "dancing out") Goode's text in mesmerizing, dramatic, and utterly funny close-ups. "Art is so much more difficult than life," it is stated, with self-mocking anguish. Stay together or do the "big maybe"? "Crying" is rhymed, so to speak, with "why-ing," and somebody suspiciously similar to the choreographer is accused of "employing in the company everybody you ever slept with." The company's dancers-actors-reciters-film stars are brilliant, and Goode himself has become a Chaplin, a Bob Hope, a Robin Williams in his ability to make an impact even while doing nothing. Most anyone else as uniquely quirky as Goode would easily become his own caricature during a 20-year run, but this man keeps getting more and more out of material that's modest but authoritative. He just needs another composer, one with more notes, at the very least. Janos Gereben/SF www.sfcv.org [log in to unmask]