Control at the Chocolate Factory, April 2026

“While it is easy to fetishize the “new”, watching Control I’m reminded of what makes a show exciting. Ayano, surprising us by hiding nothing, demonstrates that simple, clear decisions always feel special and immediate.”
– Jack Merriweather, Culturebot

“In a particularly striking moment before Control breaks, all four dancers join in a spacious diagonal line that extends across the space. Each appears beholden to their world. The scene is like a painting, wet with detail and implication as Elson demonstrates her striking ability to move this work between visual landscape and durational event at will.”
—Tess Michaelson, Brooklyn Rail

SOLD OUT PREMIERE
Control at the Chocolate Factory
April 23 at 7 PM; April 24 at 7 PM, April 25 at 3 PM; April 25 at 7 PM

https://chocolatefactorytheater.org/ayano-elson-2026/

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 and performances by Evans, isa crespo pardo, and David Leon, 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; inviting the viewer into 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.

Recent press for Control
Ayano Elson’s Control by Tess Michaelson for Brooklyn Rail
Invisible Parts of the Show by Jack Meriwether for CultureBot
Editors Selects by Miya Shaffer for Impulse Magazine