Six days a week, Sheila Lewandowski, 46, and Brian Rogers, 38, run an adventurous performance space in Long Island City, Queens, called the Chocolate Factory theater. On Sundays they forage for cholesterol and watch “Battlestar Galactica” on Netflix. The couple, who are married, live next door to the theater with their dog, J. R., a pit bull terrier and Labrador retriever mix that they found on the Jackie Robinson Parkway.
Press
“This marvelous space dedicated to dance and performance in Long Island City, Queens, has just purchased a permanent facility in the neighborhood, but for the time being its forward-thinking presentation will continue at its current home.” —Gia Kourlas, New York Times
Press & Reviews
PERHAPS it’s the name. When people speak about their experiences at the Chocolate Factory in Long Island City, Queens, they inevitably mention food.
For years, this small but vital space for experimental dance and theater, in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, has been building an under-the-radar Vimeo archive of all that happens there (or most of it). Browse dozens of performances from the past decade — along with helpful “context videos” in which the artists talk about their work — at vimeo.com/chocolatefactory.
It can be a challenge, when writing about the work of other artists, to resist the urge to “solve” for it. I say this as a maker who is deeply invested in all the different tools that can be deployed and the myriad outcomes that become available depending on seemingly small decisions. (Let’s put that light here. Let’s add an extra camera… etc.) Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed, the new co-created dance/theater piece by David Neumann and Marcella Murray, which is being co-presented by the Chocolate Factory Theater and Abrons Arts Center and runs through January 25th, certainly tempts the maker and solver in me.
“When did you first realize that you were white?” In “Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed,” David Neumann and Marcella Murray’s quiet, experimental dialogue about race, the question comes up again and again — she, a young black woman, posing it to him, a middle-aged white man who cannot answer it.
