Chocolate Factory Unveils Final Season in Its Current Home
Peter Libbey, New York Times

In its last season in its Long Island City home, the Chocolate Factory will present work by Melanie Maar, Miguel Gutierrez, Niall Jones and others, the organization announced on Monday. The Chocolate Factory bought a permanent facility in the area last year, and it aims to reopen in 2020.

“This season is about blurring the lines between process and product — by supporting creative residencies and fully produced works on the same level,” Brian Rogers, the artistic director at the Chocolate Factory, said by email. “It’s always more about the process of creation, for me, than the result.”

Ms. Maar will present a new phase of her “Line Dance Death” project, Oct. 3-6. (The first phase was in May at the Chocolate Factory’s un-renovated future home.) The new one, a collaboration with Kenta Nagai and Madeline Best, will explore the irregular structure of the creative process. The final two segments will come in the 2019-20 season. (Programming for that season will be held at various locations before the new theater opens.)

A new piece by Mr. Gutierrez, commissioned by the Chocolate Factory, will be presented as a part of the American Realness festival. Using popular Latin-American music, the form of the telenovela, and choreography that blends individual and group movement, six Latinx performers will investigate the concepts of identity and difference.

Niall Jones will close the season in May with “Untitled Fantasies in Low Fade” (working title), which focuses on transition and fragility.

The Chocolate Factory will screen Mr. Rogers’s first feature film, “Screamers,” on Aug. 24 and Aug. 25, at the Abrons Arts Center’s playhouse. Described as a “conceptual ghost story” in a news release, the film features dance and theater artists from New York’s experimental scene.

The Chocolate Factory will also host several works in progress during its 2018-19 season, including pieces by Iele Paloumpis, Stephanie Acosta and Jess Pretty, as part of a residency organized by Blaze Ferrer.

Peter Libbey for The New York Times, July 23, 2018.