with the support of the Flemish Government
Cherish Menzo/ GRIP & Theater Utrecht icw Dance On Ensemble
2025
Choreographer Cherish Menzo examines the figure of the monster in FRANK —short for Frankenstein. More than (re)producing a physical or visual portrayal of the monster, she is researching the monstrous as an embodiment of beliefs and narratives that terrify and horrify, and yet also attract us. Distortion is a choreographic leitmotif used to generate movement material and as a tool to devour the dance and loosen its structure. Cherish Menzo investigates the action of decay and how something gradually breaking down and becoming less or worse can affect one’s gestures.
The performance space fabulates on the Baka Gorong, a place located at the back of the former plantations and in front of the wetlands, where enslaved people in Suriname secretly went to carry out Winti rituals – demonized under Dutch colonial rule – and to consider fleeing.
She is joined by Omagbitse Omagbemi, Mulunesh, and Malick Cissé—performing artists from different generations—to construct a performance between the ritual, the apocalypse, and the carnival, where narrated identities are challenged, where flesh can deviate and be corrupted until it bursts and becomes unbearable. The dancers express their standing in the world with incoherent, broken-down movement in a scenery that collapses around them. In an increasingly unstable world of hiccups and unlikely events, often gruesome and violent, we are reminded of early horror movies and this eerie feeling, the flicker in the dark.
CONCEPT AND DIRECTION Cherish Menzo
CREATION AND PERFORMANCE Malick Cissé, Mulunesh, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Cherish Menzo
SOUND DESIGN Maria Muehombo a.k.a M I M I
VIDEO DESIGN Andrea Casetti
SOUND AND VIDEO ENGINEERING Arthur De Vuyst
SET DESIGN Morgana Machado Marques
LIGHTING DESIGN Ryoya Fudetani
DRAMATURGY Johanne Affricot, Renée Copraij
COSTUMES Cherish Menzo
TEXT Khadija El Kharraz Alami, Cherish Menzo
ARTISTIC ADVICE Khadija El Kharraz Alami, Nicole Geertruida
SURTITLES Jennifer Piasecki
TECHNICIAN ON TOUR Pieter-Jan Buelens, Arthur De Vuyst, Ryoya Fudetani, Hadrien Jeangette
GRAPHIC DESIGN Nick Mattan
THANKS TO Mildred Caprino, Anne Goedhart, Rodney Frederik & Winti Formation “Krin Ati,” Daryll Geldrop, Ernie Wolf, Sandra Menzo, Shavelie Menzo, Madeleine Planeix-Crocker, Sarah Garnaud, Alice Bröker, Johanna Cool, Anne de Andrade, Victor Dumont, Keiko Yamaguchi, Haruna Tanaka, Sensei Taneda, Ima Tenko
TEXTS
'Disembodied Narrator' - Cherish Menzo, inspired by and with fragments of the introduction text of 'The Host' in Wes Anderson’s 'Astroid City' and George Orwell’s '1984'.
Fragments, alterations, and reinterpretations of chapter 4 of 'The Modern Prometheus' - Mary Shelley.
'THE WITNESS, THE MONSTROUS' - Cherish Menzo
'Bam Bam' - Chaka Demus and Pliers, Sister Nancy, Toots & the Maytals
‘Faya Siton’ - a Surinamese “children's” song
INSPIRATION, REFERENCES, BIBLIOGRAPHY
‘Baka Gorong’ a place at the back of the former plantations and in front of the swamps (wetlands) where the enslaved in Suriname secretly went to perform their rituals and to consider fleeing.
‘Jab Jab from Grenada’: The word Jab was derived from the French-Creole word ‘Diable’ meaning ‘devil’, so a masquerader playing Jab Jab is playing the devil. Jab is a satirical representation of the evil inflicted by the white colonialist on the enslaved.
'Black Skin, White Masks' - Frantz Fanon
'Plantation Memories, Episodes Of Everyday Racism' - Grada Kilomba
'Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection' - Julia Jristeva
'Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus' - Mary Shelly
'Monstrous Intimacies' - Christina Sharpe
'Venus in Two Acts' - Saidiya Hartman
'My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix Performing Transgender Rage' - Susan Stryker
'For the Wild: Dr Báyò Akómoláfé on Coming alive to other senses /300' (podcast)
'AS TEMPERATURES RISE, EP 9. Báyò Akómoláfé: Monsters, Fugitivity and Sitting in the Lostness of Things' (podcast)
'The Horror Film' - Peter Hutchings
'Asteroid City' - Wes Anderson (the host and General Gibson)
‘This Thing of Darkness’ Racial Discourse in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein' - Allan Lloyd Smith, University of East Anglia
PRODUCTION GRIP & Theater Utrecht (Dagmar Bokma, Anne Breure, Maartje de Groot, Teun de Loos, Philip den Uyl, Hanne Doms, Seline Gosling, Anneleen Hermans, Tom Hemmer, Leonie Jekel, Myrthe Ligtenberg, Thomas Lloyd, Rudi Meulemans, Lize Meynaerts, Klaartje Oerlemans, Jennifer Piasecki, Florien Smits, Sylvie Svanberg, Bregt van Deursen, Ad van Mierlo, Yoni Vermeire , Nele Verreyken Vincent Wijlhuizen)
IN COLLABORATION WITH Dance On Ensemble / Bureau Ritter
DANCE ON is a project by Bureau Ritter gUG, funded by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION A propic - Line Rousseau, Marion Gauvent
CO-PRODUCTION Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Carreau du Temple - Etablissement culturel et sportif de la Ville de Paris, Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, Julidans Amsterdam, PACT Zollverein funded by the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Festival Montpellier Danse 2025, le Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans – Direction Maud Le Pladec, Tanzquartier Wien, DDD – Festival Dias da Dança, festival d’Automne à Paris, One Dance Festival, Perpodium
WITH THE SUPPORT OF Centre nationale de la danse à Pantin, BRONKS, KWP Kunstenwerkplaats, l’Atelier de Paris - Centre de développement chorégraphique national
WITH THE FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF the Flemish Government, Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government via Cronos Invest, BNG Bank Theaterprijs, Charlotte Köhler Prijs van het Cultuurfonds, Culture Moves Europe, a project funded by the European Union and the Goethe-Institut
This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.
