Big Dance Theater

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

FREE with RSVP (you may also choose from one of the paid ticket options).

In an effort to deepen our understanding of what dance is and how it has functioned throughout human history, this prismatic book project is dedicated to an artist-centric perception of dance history. This book interrogates the history of dance from the subjective, poetic perspective of a choreographer. Diverse dance artists from the American dance field contribute prismatic, disruptive perspectives on how dance has unfolded over time and what dance history is. They reimagine the question: What is dance history? Twelve illustrated booklets, each written by a working choreographer, address the subject of dance history from nonacademic, subjective, poetic perspectives. The books model a way of enlarging and complicating how we view dance history by giving the authorial microphone to artists, to learn how their embodied perceptions relate to or diverge from the dominant dance canon.

Authors: mayfield brooks, thomas f. defrantz, Maura Nguyen Donohue, Keith Hennessy, Bebe Miller, Okwui Okpokwasili, Eiko Otake, Annie-B Parson, Javier Stell-Fresquez, Ogemdi Ude, Mariana Valencia, and Andros Zins-Browne.

Published by Dancing Foxes Press and Wesleyan University Press.

Produced by Big Dance Theater with the generous support of The Howard Gilman Foundation, The Starry Night Fund, Big Dance Theater’s Board Designated Fund, Virginia and Timothy Millhiser, and King’s Fountain.

Dance History(s) was published through a partnership between Dancing Foxes Press, Big Dance Theater, and Wesleyan University Press.

 

A Note On Ticket Prices

The Chocolate Factory Theater now offers a tiered ticketing price structure, with the goal of remaining accessible to every person who wishes to attend our events while acknowledging the very real value of the service – namely, artistic and administrative labor – that a ticket purchase represents; and adjusting for the realities of inflation and the ever-increasing cost of…everything.

We ask that you select the option that best reflects your individual circumstances. This is not a “pay what you wish” scenario; rather, it’s “pay as much as your circumstances allow”. For context: in the absence of outside funding, a true cost ticket to a Chocolate Factory performance would be $275.

Our tiered options are as follows:

1. $35 (base price – the equivalent of one hour of labor for a lead artist, performer, design collaborator or technician)
2. $20
3. $10
4. $50
5. $100
6. $275 (true cost ticket)

Our intention here is not to create walled gardens or tiers of access based on monetary status; we’re merely trying to make our practice – of paying artists, technicians and administrative staff a fair wage (more than 80% of our annual budget goes to labor, fyi) – more sustainable (or truthfully, less unsustainable), while remaining (we hope!) accessible and welcoming to all.

As a ticket buyer, you’ll receive the same experience regardless of the price you pay. It’s general admission for everyone.