QNYC Event Highilight: Telling The Bees

Though it is dying out in the modern age, the custom of telling the bees when their keeper died was once very common. It was believed that a conversation would keep the highly respected bees from absconding or even dying and encourage their affiliation with the new keeper. On March 13, The Chocolate Factory Theater opens a four-day run of Telling The Bees, a dance performance by British-born choreographer Keely Garfield. Recently nominated for a New York Dance and Performance Award Bessie, Garfield forages links between the waggle-and-round dances of the honeybees in this piece, highlighting their timeless industrious, cooperative societies, the sweet results of their toil and the sting of breakdown in our own organizing principles.