The Chocolate Factory Theater to Stage QUEENS TERMINUS

The Chocolate Factory Theater presents the world premiere of Queens Terminus, a new evening-length performance and art exhibit by Jon Kinzel. Tickets are $20 and may be purchased in advance at (212) 352-3101 or www.chocolatefactorytheater.org.

In Queens Terminus - a new evening-length dance and art exhibit - Jon Kinzel brings his decades-long and deeply interrelated choreography and visual art practices to bear on considerations of the time before and the time after the advent of the personal computer, the Internet, and the smartphone. Exploring bridges between improvisation and composition, Queens Terminus experiments with unforeseen performance material, as well as isolated and momentum-based movement forms, to produce a loose collection of drawings and paintings, video, sculpture, and dances, which variously address technology's effects on visual culture, social relationships, performance, and the presentation of the moving body.

Queens Terminus builds upon a body of research begun with Atlantic Terminus (2016, The Invisible Dog) and Pacific Terminus (2019, Telematic Media Arts, San Francisco).

"My work activates unexpected borderlands between performer and audience, and as such there are always unknown and uncontrollable elements/relationships which provide a desirable tension to the experience on both sides: a complex and wavering terrain in which a very special "social" equilibrium is possible.

I have maintained a fluid interdisciplinary practice for several decades, creating visual art in tandem with my choreographic work. Also, I have obtained crucial insights - humor, mystery, beauty, sense of corporeality, and connection to the wider world - as an artist working in human services, the world of care-giving.

When first emerging as a choreographer in the 1990's, I frequently found myself performing in spaces - theaters, galleries, lofts, clubs - typically carved out of larger structures, that were wildly varied in shape and size. They required me to be adaptable. But they also brought to light the features of the performance itself: spatial proportions, audience positions, and sound environments. I learned to approach my performances as temporary installations, in which drawings and other forms of mark making, executed during the dance, served to situate myself and the audience within a mutable, embodied social space. At the same time, I have long sustained a drawing practice, both as a tool in my choreography and as an end-in-itself. And, in recent years, I have begun to exhibit in galleries, constructing installation-like environments through durational performances, which entail a combination of movement, mark-making, and material manipulation, to orchestrate somatic social encounters."

Queens Terminus is created and performed by Jon Kinzel in collaboration with Priscilla Marrero and Nik Owens. Lighting Design by Joe Levasseur. Costumes by Nina Katan. Creative Consultants: Cassim Shepard (filmmaker and urbanist), Kuldeep Singh (painter), and Laura Watt (painter).

Jon Kinzel has presented his work, including numerous commissions and solo shows, in a variety of national and international venues: receiving critical praise for Responsible Ballet and What We Need Is a Bench to Put Books On (2010), The Kitchen; Someone Once Called Me A Sound Man (2013), The Chocolate Factory - ARTFORUM's Best of 2013; COWHAND CON MAN (2015), Gibney Dance/Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center; Atlantic Terminus (2016), The Invisible Dog Arts Center, and Standing in a Doorway and Calling It a Dance (2021 at Roulette). He feels fortunate to have performed and or collaborated with artists across several disciplines - recently with Yvonne Rainer + Emily Coates, Vicky Shick, Bob Ajar, Jarrod Beck, Nina Katan, Jody Melnick, and Cathy Weis - and he has served as a curator, movement dramaturg, mentor, and sound designer. While at MacDowell he continued developing Pacific Terminus, a project he initiated at Telematic Gallery in San Francisco: a loose collection of drawings and paintings, video, sculpture, and dance forms, which variously address technology's effects on visual culture, social relationships, performance, and the presentation of the moving body. He has contributed to several publications and taught at universities, the Merce Cunningham Trust, Lincoln Center Education, Tsekh in Moscow, Dance House in Ireland, and Movement Research.

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