Cherish Menzo / GRIP
& Theater Utrecht
icw Dance On Ensemble
  





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+ PERFORMANCE TEXTS

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FRANKChoreographer 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.







“

Matters in monstrosity 
/ Matters of monstrosity

”


ESSAY




FRANK marks the third chapter of a trilogy of works conceived by choreographer Cherish Menzo between 2019 and 2025. Distortion serves as the trilogy’s leitmotif, first established in Menzo’s solo JEZEBEL, then in her duet DARKMATTER, and now explored in FRANK, a group piece for four performers. Akin to the “Chopped & Screwed” technique used in hip-hop, distortion has been a method, a tactic even, by which Menzo generates images and movements that defy stereotypical representations of Black bodies. With FRANK, Menzo further develops her study of how such imagery comes to be produced and circulated, turning specifically to the figure of the monster. The trilogy exhibits Menzo’s keen attention to how perception – both visual and somatic – is informed and therefore can be deformed, so as to see and feel otherwise. 

“Blackness is indefinitely associated with monstrosity,” states philosopher Báyò Akómoláfé[1]. Indeed, the monster’s racial genealogy has been penned by white modernity. However, the monster, argues Akómoláfé, is not “a what” – the stable image of inherent evil. Rather, the monster “is a how”: it is “the program lurking in the image, the anamorphosis of the casual image”[2]. The monster is a “multicultural technology”[3], operating as a critique of subjectivity that aims to keep identities static and standardized in accordance with the so-called “natural” order. Therefore, the monster is indeed a disruption, a glitch, that does not seek to destroy, as the trope would have it, but to transform through trickery, surprise, and deception. The monster is an agent of distortion. 

In a sense, FRANK stages distortion at work, and the performers – Menzo, joined by Omagbitse Omagbemi, Mulunesh, and Malick Cissé – are its agents. In keeping with Akómoláfé’s philosophy, these agents are not representations of monsters on stage, nor do they perform monstrosity as one might expect from a piece bearing a title that suggests an abbreviation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818). Clad in black raincoats, hoods drawn overhead, these agents are endowed with a mission which they state from the onset: “Tonight’s performance takes us backstage to witness firsthand the creation, start to finish, of a concoction of imaginations mounted on the frightening. FRANK does not exist. It is imaginary, a stitched fabulation, created, expressly for a particular moment in time.” These anonymous agents, narrators of sorts, thereby draw us into the inner workings of horror, as always already adjacent to desire. 

Indeed, staying with this relationship between horror and attraction, FRANK takes its cue from the contributions of another seminal author, Christina Sharpe. Concerned with how monstrosity structures terms of relation, Sharpe names “monstrous intimacies” the enduring, deeply entangled relationships produced by the racial and sexual violence of slavery. However, Sharpe insists that these intimacies are not just historical but are reenacted, transmitted, and experienced in the present, often in ways that are unacknowledged – “everyday mundane horrors”[4] – or that are misidentified as normal or even pleasurable. Menzo, like Sharpe, examines the consequences of denying our shared complicity in how the past continues to shape contemporary narratives and experiences. 

FRANK’s thrust stage configuration participates in Menzo’s attempt to question this complicity in a theatrical context, notably through the “monstrous intimacy” formed and sustained by the gaze. As is the case in her two previous pieces, Menzo does not seek to abstract the performance context, nor its performativity in her work. On the contrary, Western theatre has been a site of reproduction and exacerbation of the imagery Menzo specifically takes up in her pieces. As such, FRANK breaks with the frontal set-up of both JEZEBEL and DARKMATTER, to tighten the focus between performers and audience members, as well as that between audience members themselves who can, in this spatial configuration, watch each other watching. While also referencing the structure of anatomical theatre, the choreographer’s choice of staging throws into doubt who is under actual examination.   



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Menzo stresses this ambivalence upon which monstrous intimacies have been built, through the use of a transparent plastic curtain that puts it plainly: our gaze is effectively mediated through artificial means. “FRANK does not exist”: layered, we can now unpack the meaning of this statement. The ultimate fabulation/fabrication is convincing ourselves of the infallibility of transparency, of the impermeability of objectivity. Furthermore, while the curtain delineates the tri-frontal configuration of the performance, it establishes a border between the agents, who move both inside and outside of this space, and the audience members, who seemingly stay put. Yet, referring once again to Akómoláfé, we might understand the use of this apparatus differently. “Every time we meet a monster we cross a threshold. We ‘enter into’ a liminal zone”[5], submits Akómoláfé.   

Menzo’s staging thus emphasizes how monstrosity thwarts and warps perception: if, as the agents state from the start, FRANK takes place “backstage”, foregrounded by the curtain as the performance space, drawing a thrust configuration that specifically retains the utility of the backstage area, then where are we? Implicated by the tri-frontal set-up, that recalls the complicity of our gaze, we are further positioned in an imbricated space. According to Menzo, this threshold is meant to reflect the “Baka Gorong”, a place located at the back of 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. Surinamese singer Anne Goedhart’s piece, “Aisa De Na Baka Gorong / So Wadyo / Pityin Begi Mama” looped in the performance further suggests this in-between site of hidden practice and plotting, while also invoking Baka Gorong Aisa’s presence. Monsters emerge when “edges stray”[6], states Akómoláfé: the Baka Gorong is where the borders between place and presence collapse. The song is a harbinger of what’s to come.  

Borrowing from Winti footwork, the agents' initial directive and individual movements soon morph into circular patterns. Here, Menzo makes use of the curtain’s tri-frontal envelope behind which a parade takes shape. The choreographer references figures such as the “Jab”, derived from “the devil” in French Creole, and used by white colonizers to name enslaved people in Grenada. In an act of derision, masqueraders, covered in molasses, tar, oil, black paint or charcoal, “play the devil” during Caribbean carnival celebrations to satirize the horrors inflicted upon their ancestors. Rather than satisfying the desire for monstrous representations, Menzo choreographs a parade that demonstrates the distortion that occurs when dancing on the threshold from which monsters emerge. The agents’ gestures seem fragmented, yet connected: as they come into contact, they transmit. Movements are borrowed and sampled, corrupted and devoured, made awkward and incomplete. The parade leans into codes of the grotesque, of foolery, or even of the absurd, without ever yielding to them. Upon crossing the threshold, pursues Akómoláfé, “We never walk away intact.”[7] Contagion leads to re-compositions.  

Indeed, as the parade thrusts the performance into a decelerated rhythm, during which the performers strip each other of their uniforms, I am reminded, via Joshua Chambers-Letson, of Nina Simone’s use of “the seemingly chaotic metaphor of a ‘great storm’, emphasizing the creative capacities of [...] disordering and reorganization”[8]. The metaphor serves to describe how Simone assimilated, and effectively reconfigured, classical music into her repertoire. Re-compositions lead to collapse. 

Collapse in FRANK, first announced through song, ultimately becomes material. As previously explored in DARKMATTER and now amplified in this third chapter, FRANK undoes (the) theatre: not only our expectations and modes of perception, but its very structure. The final scenes of FRANK highlight the industrious labor of distortion. A threshold, like a storm, does not leave intact. Though shredded and decayed, the stage is not left bare. It bears the mark of how monstrous intimacies (come to) matter, and exposes why it matters to understand their make.   



                       Madeleine Planeix-Crocker, april 2025








PERFORMANCE TEXTS

01


Fragment from: “Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude’’ a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley (with a small adaptation). Shared in the introduction of ‘’the Modern Prometheus’’
by Mary Shelley page xxvi.



…I have watched
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps.
And my heart ever gazes on the depth
Of thy deep mysteries. 
I have made my bed
In charnels and on coffins, where Black Death
Keeps record of the trophies won from thee;
Hoping to still these obstinate questionings
Of thee and thine, 
by forcing some lone ghost,
Thy messenger, 
to render the take
Of what we are.












02



DISEMBODIED
NARRATOR





Welcome, good evening…..
or is it day…?

Tonight’s program takes us backstage to witness first-hand the creation, start to finish, of a concoction of imaginations mounted on the frightening.

FRANK does not exist.

It is imaginary, a stitched fabulation created expressly for a particular moment in time.

2,700 seconds x 2, i.e. 5,400 seconds in linear time, to be as accurate as possible.


The characters, the humans, the bodies, people, the symbols are fictional, the text hypothetical, and the events an apocryphal fabrication, where together, you, I, and the other, will create an authentic account of the inner workings of something (un)homely.


Our story begins, of course, with setting up the order….
This shall be our tool to create and maintain a shared sense of reality.

Order

You shall not trust or interact with any familiarity.

Thee shall never speak the truth.

Thee is not inhabited by Soul. 

You shall not waste. Therefore, any discarded flesh shall be reutilized…

Again, and again, and again, and again…



Pleasure is mouth, pleasure is mouth, pleasure is mouth, taste is skin, taste is skin, taste is skin, ignorance is strength, ignorance is strength, ignorance is strength, logic is sex, logic is sex, logic is sex, rectum is touch, rectum is touch, rectum is touch, war is peace, war is peace, war is peace, vision is fiction, vision is fiction, vision is fiction, freedom is slavery, freedom is slavery, freedom is slavery, context is hearing, context is hearing, context is hearing, and…..hmmmm 



HMMM own, own, own, own, own, my own, his own, her own, your own ….. our own body.

Let’s witness the accuracy of our corporeal reality.

No worries, language will guide us through…

Don’t underestimate your observations beyond language or what escapes language, even though.



Perhaps there lies your agency



Take notice of repetition
Take notice of repetition…

Apologies for not explicitly giving space to a consensus…..

It’s just not the way things work here …



The order is not a fixed or unchanging concept. So,

We can suspect or not power, control, and marginalisation…

Oh well, let’s enter FRANK….
03


BAM BAM
Chaka Demus & Pliers / Sister Nancy
/ Toots  & The Maytals





I want you to know that, 
I am the man who
Fight for the right, 
not the wrong
Seeing this and seeing that
Going here, and going there
Soon you will find out the man I'm supposed to be

This man, don't trouble 
no one
But if you trouble this man 
it will bring a bam-bam
What a bam-bam
What a bam-bam, bam-bam
It'll bring a bam-bam
Bam-Bam, what a bam-bam

This man, don't trouble no one
But if you trouble this man it will bring a bam-bam
What a bam-bam
What a bam-bam, bam-bam
It'll bring a bam-bam
It'll bring a bam-bam
Bam-Bam, what a bam-bam
04



THE
COLLAPSE





To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.
To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. 

we must first have recourse to death
we must first have recourse to death

I became acquainted with the science of anatomy, but this was not sufficient; one must also observe the natural decay, and hmm, cor-corps-corps-corpse- corruption of the human body.

To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. 
To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. 

we must first have recourse to death

To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. 
I became acquainted with the science of anatomy, but this was not sufficient; one must also observe the natural decay, and hmmm cor-corps-corps-corpse- corruption of the human body.

Take notice of repetition.

Apologies for not explicitly giving space to a consensus…..

To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. 

Collapse

At what cost?

Knock, Knock 

Who’s there?


Okay, let me be FRANK, in my education, I have taken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors. I, I, I, as in I, the self, not you or the other, do not ever remember to have trembled at a tail of superstition or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. Darkness had no effect upon my fancy, and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies, the characters, the humans, the bodies, the people, the symbols deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food of the worm.

The characters, the humans, the bodies, people, the symbols are fictional, the text hypothetical, and the events an apocryphal fabrication, where together, you, I, and the other will present an authentic account of the inner workings of something unhomely.
Should we still consider this fictional…? 

Ignorance is strength.

Bam bam 

Who’s there?

Hmm, now it’s me, not you, but me, me the Other, capital O, small o, I take the capital letter, I was led to examine the causes and evolution of the body-body-body – my, his, her, your, our own corruption, to spend my days and nights in vaults and mass graves. My attention was thus focused on the most unbearable object to the delicacy of human feelings. I-I-I saw the purest forms grow ugly and deteriorate, I witnessed the devastating action of death gnawing and destroying life, I discovered vermin feeding on the eye and brain. I-I-I stared, I observed, I analysed in detail the causes and effects, the passage from life to death and from death to life.

Hmm, now it’s me, not you, but me, me the Other, capital O, small o, I take the capital letter, I was led to examine the causes and evolution of the body-body-body – my, his, her, your, our own corruption, to spend my days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. I-I-I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted, I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I I-I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. I-I-I stared, I observed, I analysed in detail the causes and effects, the passage from life to death and from death to life.

context is hearing, context is hearing, context is hearing

Bam Bam

Who’s there?

Collapse 

Knock knock or Bam Bam

Remember, I, I , I , I , I, as in I who became the Other, through your gaze. I am not recording a vision of a madman.

Take notice of repetition

The sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens than that which you now affirm is true. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the discovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, no, no, no, no, no, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. 

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the requirement of knowledge and how much happier the man, the human, person is who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.

Take notice of repetition 

Dangerous is the requirement of knowledge, and happier is the man, the human, person, who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.
Ignorance is strength.

What about the apocalypse when…While there was the apocalypse then, and there is the apocalypse now.

Who shall conceive the horrors of our secret toil as we dabble among the unhallowed damps of the grave or torture the living animal to animate the lifeless clay.
05



THE WITNESS,
THE MONSTROUS





The explosion will not happen today. It is too soon or too late.

Mankind, I believe in you….

But first, I’ll be digging into my own flesh to find meaning.

Look at me, unstitched, revealing my porous self. Look at me, unstitched, revealing my porous self. Look at me, unstitched, revealing my porous self. A bloodstained gateway from the ancestors to tell the Other’s stories.

What shall we do when the monstrous decides to become FRANK? 
Incarnate, to be honest and direct?

After all, to speak is to exist absolutely by the other, small o small o small o; so who is the actual narrator of this story or his-story.

Honestly, we entered FRANK. When? … Did you notice?

Would you say…that this flesh, this flesh, this flesh is inevitably tied to be to become, come, come, coming, I am coming, I am coming, I am coming! 
Ahh, such monstrous intimacies.

To see the corpse, to feel the corpse, to fear the corpse, to become the corpse, to play, to play makes I/ me perish, and the other with the small o,o,o,o,o affirm its mastery like a magic trick, a little riddle…

We plunder, we plunder, we plunder, and still we wonder….

What about the apocalypse when? While there was the apocalypse then, and there is the apocalypse now.
Nay, No, No, No, No More…

This man, woman, human don’t trouble no one, but if you trouble this Human, it will bring a BAM BAM. YET AT WHAT COST. The stakes are high not for us, but for the other.

Should we become the worm eating the structures, full-on corruptions.

Let’s bring the background to the foreground, the outside to the inside.

Our creation complies with the killing machine. 

Our need for recognition complies with the killing machine.

Our house is held intact as we comply with the killing machine.

We recourse to death, we recourse to death, we recourse to death

Welcome, good evening…..
or is it day…?

Tonight’s program takes us backstage to witness first-hand the creation, start to finish, of a concoction of imaginations mounted on the frightening.

Should we still consider this fictional?

FRANK does not exist. Or does it?

BAM BAM 

Who’s there 

COLLAPSE


(with references to Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon & Monstrous Intimacies by Christina Sharpe)
06



FAYA SITON
(an adaptation)





( Sranan Tongo )

Faya siton, no bron mi so no bron mi so.
Faya siton, no bron mi so no bron mi so.

Agen masra Jantje e kiri suma pikin.
Agen masra Jantje e kiri suma pikin.

Faya siton, no bron mi so no bron mi so.
Faya siton, no bron mi so no bron mi so.

Agen masra Jantje e kiri suma pikin.
Agen masra Jantje e kiri suma pikin.

Te na dey fu tide we kiri suma pikin.
Te na dey fu tide we kiri suma pikin.


( English )

Firestone do not burn me like that, do not burn me like that.
Firestone do not burn me like that, do not burn me like that.

Again master Jan kills a human child.
Again master Jan kills a human child.

To this day we kill human children.
To this day we kill human children