Early Stage Creative Residencies

Fall 2025 – Spring 2026

$0 – $275

Residencies will take place at The Chocolate Factory Theater, 38-33 24th Street, Long Island City.

For the second year, The Chocolate Factory Theater’s Programming Committee (led by artist Board Member Neil Greenberg), working closely with Co-Founder / Artistic Director Brian Rogers, invited current Season Artists to nominate fellow artists to receive early stage creative residencies.

Throughout the 2025 / 2026 Season, Crackhead Barney, Jesse Bonnell, lily gold, Amanda Horowitz, Kashia Kancey, Joanna Kotze, Maya Lee-Parritz, Kimiko Tanabe, Zerina Tye, and Lu Yim will each receive access to space and financial support for early stage research into their new projects.

image by Rachel Keane from lu yim's Bottom Edge Air, performed at Judson Church. Three performers are positioned before the church altar. One, wearing green, crouches beneath a second performer dressed entirely in red. In the foreground, a third performer, wearing a white shirt and pants in a camouflage pattern, looks down.
image by Rachel Keane from lu yim's Bottom Edge Air, performed at Judson Church. Three performers are positioned before the church altar. One, wearing green, crouches beneath a second performer dressed entirely in red. In the foreground, a third performer, wearing a white shirt and pants in a camouflage pattern, looks down.

lu yim – Bottom Edge Air

Work in progress showing – Saturday February 7 at 3pm. RSVP here.

Bottom Edge Air feels through public symbols and characters to reckon with our bodies as weapons and subjects of crisis.

This project continues Yim’s research on dissociation to understand it as an expression of our collective interiority, thinking beyond the language of symptom and through a somatically metaphysical and quantum lens.

This iteration will feature a series of overlapping duets that begin with two subjects, Elon Musk’s personal “Tesla Roadster” and “Starman”, a mannequin astronaut, who in 2017 were rocket launched into space, marking a significant gesture towards SpaceX’s colonial project.

Bottom Edge Air will be accompanied by live audio description by Kiera Bono. It is supported in part by Movement Research Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, a subsidized space residency from Lower Manhattan Culture Council on Governor’s Island.

Performed by: Cynthia Chang, Ella W-S, lu yim, Nami Yamamoto, Takahiro Yamamoto, Yining Chi, Kiera Bono. Audio Description: Kiera Bono. Costumes: Laurel Atwell. Lighting: Maggie Heath. Installation: DB Amorin.

image from lily gold's new work in progress. A hand drawn pink background. lily's mother lays on the unseen floor, knees raised. lily, wearing an orange cap and black sweats, leans against them.
image from lily gold's new work in progress. A hand drawn pink background. lily's mother lays on the unseen floor, knees raised. lily, wearing an orange cap and black sweats, leans against them.

lily gold – Sheshi

Work in progress showing – Saturday September 20 at 3pm. RSVP here.

Sheshi is a playful approach to transmuting intergenerational trauma through dance. Rekindling reverence for elders, this duet between choreographer and interdisciplinary artist lily gold and her mother features sound support from artist dani derks and surprise guest performers. Tuning to ancestral resilience and reviving parts lost to assimilation, their scores are transparent with tensions and explore family stories they’ve been told, as well as ones their bodies have begun to tell. Embracing back-handed humor and coaxing aggression out of exile, they offer up their intimacy for resonance.