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Taste of LIC is a hit with the community and neighboring boroughs.

Taste of LIC 2011. Long Island City is HOT!  Just read the faces.

Queens Borough President Helen Marshall says "Guess what everybody. The Secret is out. Long Island City is HOT!"

Sheila Lewandowski, Executive Director of The Chocolate Factory, produces Taste of LIC.   (L) Christine Quinn, Speaker NYC Council (R) Jimmy Van Bramer, NY City Council Member   Marcie Kesner, Planning & Development Specialist, Kramer Levin Naftakis & Frankel LLP with her happy husband Gary.     Full video coverage and follow up Q&A are available in the left column in 3 segments of approximately three to five minutes each. taste_of_lic_20110607_part1 taste_of_lic_20110607_part2 taste_of_lic_20110607_part3

Long Island City, New York June 7, 2011 - "Guess what everybody. The Secret is out.  Long Island City is HOT!" So declared Queens Borough President Helen Marshall as she addressed the crowd of people under the large tent at Gantry Plaza  State Park along the East River in Long Island City...just a few steps from where the new inter-borough Ferry will soon land to shuttle people between Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. Sheila Lewandowski, Executive Director, and her husband, Creative Director, Brian Rogers, Founders of The Chocolate Factory and producers of the fith annual Taste of LIC showed once again that the community is hot because of it mix of arts, performing arts, culture, hip restaurant foods, and a vibrant young community that is eating it all up. The 6th Annual Taste of LIC featured nearly 50 restaurants and 100 local businesses. Lewandowski, Rogers, and four key supporters of The Chocolate Factory spoke about the importance of Long Island City and the Taste of Long Island City to Queens and NYC, also promoting the new ferry that will begin service on Monday connecting Long Island City with Manhattan and Brooklyn by shuttle boat. Christine Quinn Speaker of the City Council Helen Marshall Queens Borough President Jimmy Van Bramer City Council Member Peter Vallone Jr. City Council Member OurLIC was at the event.  Photos are presented with this article along with video of speeches from the above people. We agree with QB President Helen Marshall.  Long Island City is HOT!  Just read the faces. ABOUT THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (FROM THEIR PRESS RELEASE) “It feels a little bit like the first New York I knew in the ’70s and ’80s,’ ” he said. “Not in a retro way at all, but art and residence and commerce were in a more balanced relationship than they are now. It’s not a reference to that time, just a little place where that is occurring again.” – Tere O’Connor, in a New York Times Profile of the Chocolate Factory, May 2010 The Obie Award-winning Chocolate Factory Theater supports the creation of new work in a variety of disciplines including theater, dance, music, multimedia and the visual arts. The Factory’s 5,000 square foot facility is home to new work by the company’s founding artists; and provides support to visiting artists in the form of multi-week creative residencies; dedicated access to space and technical equipment free of charge; marketing, press, and administrative assistance; commissioning support; and a guaranteed artist fee. Since its first season in Fall 2005, the Visiting Artist Program (curated by Artistic Director Brian Rogers) has become a leading incubator for new developments in experimental performance. The Chocolate Factory values the process of creation and the spirit of experimentation. The work of our founding artists and our dedication to supporting the creation of new work by Visiting Artists bears this out. The Factory’s founding artists needed a space in which to create and present their work on their own terms, with full technical support, over an extended period of time. Our work with Visiting Artists is an extension of this principle. Artists invited to work at The Chocolate Factory receive dedicated rehearsal and performance residencies and are encouraged to put our space and technical resources to use in imaginative ways, with very few practical limitations. To this end, our multi-use spaces are designed for maximum flexibility. The work of the Factory’s founding artists emphasizes multi-disciplinary collaboration – combining movement, music, video and text to devise a means of storytelling that is immediate, collage-like, highly visual, and dependent on new technologies. When successful, our work is not easily categorized as theater, dance, new music, or video art and is rather a thorough intermingling of these disciplines. By extension, our curatorial values when it comes to Visiting Artists leads us to work that exists across or between disciplines – work that requires new methods, more time, and a new kind of audience.   Sheila Lewandowski, Executive Director of The Chocolate Factory, produces Taste of LIC. (L) Christine Quinn, Speaker NYC Council (R) Jimmy Van Bramer, NY City Council Member Marcie Kesner, Planning & Development Specialist, Kramer Levin Naftakis & Frankel LLP with her happy husband Gary. Brian Rogers, The Chocolate Factory and co-producer of The Taste of LIC

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