Whitney Live artist-in-residence Colin Gee is getting ready for several shows in June at Long Island City performance space, The Chocolate Factory. If you haven’t checked out Colin’s online studio space now is a great time to get familiar with his current projects, including scenes from the Chocolate Factory show Across the Road.
The Chocolate Factory Presents
Colin Gee
Across The Road
June 17-20, 2009
Wednesday-Saturday @ 8PM
Tickets $15
www.chocolatefactorytheater.org
(212) 352-3101
@ The Chocolate Factory
5-49 49th Avenue
LIC, NY 11101
7 to Vernon/Jackson (1st stop in Queens)
G to 21st/Van Alast
Created and performed by Whitney Live Artist in Residence Colin Gee, Across The Road combines film and movement to set the stage for a twist on the story of divided lovers. Over the course of a day, Mark and Aoife, a young engaged couple, struggle to come to terms with Mark’s inheritance. Running a bed and breakfast on his family farm, they find themselves at odds after Mark’s father dies and leaves him with a legacy that Aoife resists. As an original film (made in and around Limerick, Ireland, with Daghdha Dance Company dancers Mark Carberry and Laura Dannequin) is projected through a series of semi-transparent “walls,” narrative forces are transformed into psychological forces at times when the characters are forced to confront critical choices, and the action of the story shifts from the screen to the stage. Gee’s precise, miniature movements interpret, interact with and respond to the film, as expectations of cinematic naturalism are subverted by the protagonist’s fracture of emotion, history, and incident.
With an orchestral score by Erin Gee (winner of a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship), Across the Road was developed in part during Colin Gee’s Whitney Live residency at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and through a series of residencies at Daghdha Dance Company in Limerick, Ireland. Across The Road was commissioned by The Chocolate Factory with support from NYSCA.
