Ayano Elson

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.

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. $25
3. $15
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.

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

Choreographer and dancer Ayano Elson premieres Control, a deeply physical, formally minimal dance created in collaboration with performers Cayleen Del Rosario, Amelia Heintzelman, Owen Prum, and evan ray suzuki, with music by Matt Evans, lighting by Madeline Best, and costumes by Kate Williams.

The piece treats the dancer as a conduit into an internal psychic space shaped by accumulated desire and eroticism. A site of longing, waiting, and devastation.

Drawing on American postmodern dance, postwar slow cinema from East Asia, and Ayano’s inheritance of Okinawan performance lineages, Control unfolds through imitation, rupture, and transformation.