2025-2026

DARKMATTER

Body can you become hypothetical, a galaxy, in full gear acceleration, a liquid star monster, failing to die?

In ~~DARK~~MATTER, Cherish Menzo and her onstage partner Camilo Mejía Cortés look for ways to detach their bodies from the way they are perceived and the daily reality in which they move. Among other things, they look up to the sky, at dark matter and at black holes that meet and collide to give birth to a new, (afro)futuristic and enigmatic body. ~~DARK~~MATTER wants to get rid of the biased way of looking at one’s own body, at that of the other, and at the stories we attribute to them. Together, they throw their bodies into a complex conversation that they want to both enter into and transcend – a duality that feeds the performance.

Just as in her previous project, JEZEBEL, Menzo stretches her movement language further by applying the Chopped and Screwed method to her movement language. A remix technique from hip-hop music in which the tempo is sharply reduced. By stretching the notions of time, the register changes and the performing body manages to generate new readings.

~~DARK~~MATTER wants to create a thorough reshuffle of our atoms, looking for a new form for – and way of looking at – our body and the complex outside world to which it relates.

Please note

Stroboscope effects are used in this performance and there are 3 extensive black-outs. The music in this work can be perceived as intensive, earplugs are at your disposal. You will encounter nude bodies on stage.

Frascati Producties

Both a prominent podium and the largest (inter)nationally operating production house in the Netherlands, Frascati supports theatre-makers from home and abroad. Frascati makers defy categorisation: they work in many disciplines, seek crossovers, are utterly unique, and take the future by storm. The work originates from the rapidly changing urban environment and is often engaged and documentary. From text-based theatre to performances and from dance to mime. From large theatres to location projects and smaller, edited solos.

Frascati Producties help launch now lauded theatre makers such as Jetse Batelaan, Maren E. Bjørseth, Andrea Bozic, Daria Bukvic, Ivo Dimchev, Jefta van Dinther, Laura van Dolron, Pere Faura, Marjolijn van Heemstra, Julian Hetzel, Florentina Holzinger, Susanne Kennedy, Sadettin Kırmızıyüz, Lucas De Man, Jan Martens, Hannah De Meyer, Char Li Chung, Ivana Muller, Davy Pieters, andcompany&Co., Julie Van den Berghe, Florian Meyer, Michele Rizzo, Joachim Robbrecht, Sabri Saad el Hamus and Naomi Velissariou.

Frascati is part of De Coproducers and the international networks House on Fire and WEB.

GRIP

GRIP was founded in 2014 by choreographer and dancer Jan Martens and manager Klaartje Oerlemans. From 2023 on, GRIP choreographers Femke Gyselinck, Jan Martens, Cherish Menzo, and Steven Michel act together as artistic directors. They do so in close dialogue with Klaartje Oerlemans and Rudi Meulemans, who coordinates and facilitates the dialogue between the four makers in his role of artistic coordinator.

Camilo Mejia Cortés

Camilo Mejia Cortés grew up in Cali (Colombia) until he moved to Spain at 14. After a dance education in Barcelona, he started at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance.

He was later part of ‘Sound of the Trap’, a production by the Bodhi Project and Cecilia Bengolea and of ‘L’incoronazione di Poppea’, directed by Jan Lauwers. Jan subsequently invited him into his Needcompany, where he participated in ‘War and Turpentine’, ‘Isabella’s Room’, ‘All the good’ and ‘PIE (Probabilities of Independent Events)’.

In 2020, he collaborated on ‘The Sadness’ (Ula Sickle), ‘Draconis Lacrimae’ (Pablo Esbert Lilienfeld and Federico Vladimir) and ‘Spheres & Circles, Circles & Spheres’ (Isaiah Lopaz).

Since May 2022, Camilo has been touring internationally with ~~DARK~~MATTER, a project by Cherish Menzo, with whom he shares the stage.

He is currently working on a personal project that explores the influence of salsa music in the construction of his artistic discourse by diving into this genre’s artistic, socio-political, and spiritual aspects. By doing this, he will contribute to the archive of the experiences of the African Diaspora.

Cherish Menzo

Cherish Menzo (°1988, The Netherlands) is a choreographer and dancer, who lives in Brussels and Amsterdam. In 2013 she graduated from The Urban Contemporary (JMD) at the ‘Hogeschool voor de Kunsten’ in Amsterdam.

Cherish has appeared in the work of Lisbeth Gruwez (THE SEA WITHIN), Jan Martens (THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER, any attempt will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones), Nicole Beutler (6: THE SQUARE), as well as collaborations with the likes of Akram Khan, Ula Sickle, Olivier Dubois and Eszter Salamon. Her powerful movement language also comes into its own in her own work, which tours internationally.

n 2016, she and Nicole Geertruida made EFES, an exhausting duet in which perfection and fallibility raise intriguing questions about how we like to see human beings. Sorry, But I Feel Slightly Disidentified… (2018), a solo made by Benjamin Kahn for (and with input from) Cherish, was an attempt to create a cartography of how we experience and meet the other. The seeds for this production were laid within the framework of Fraslab, after which an artistic dialogue between Cherish and Frascati Producties was initiated. Hereafter, Cherish made LIVE (2018), a cross between dance performance and pop/rock concert in collaboration with musician Müşfik Can Müftüoğlu.

In 2019 Cherish worked at Frascati Producties on JEZEBEL, a dance performance inspired by the phenomenon Video Vixen from the hip-hop clips of the 90s. Jezebel, a contemporary hip-hop honey, refuses to be defined by others and shakes off her image by deconstructing and redefining it.

In May 2022, during Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, DARKMATTER premiered, a duet in which she and Camilo Mejía Cortés, with the help of the distorted rap choir, search for ways to detach their bodies and the daily reality in which they move from a forced perception. In the context of DARKMATTER , Cherish also gives workshops on the chopped & screwed technique, a process from hip-hop music that Cherish applies to the moving and performing body in the performance.
As part of Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam’s research programme Welcome To Our Guesthouse, Cherish made KILLED AND EXTENDED DARLINGS: SUBTLE WHINE in autumn 2023, an audiovisual performative landscape that embraces the subtle nuances and mechanics of gyration.

Cherish is currently working on FRANK – THE MONSTROUS AND HORROR THE 3RD PART OF A SPECULATIVE FABULATED TRILOGY (working title, premiering May 2025). In continuation of JEZEBEL and DARKMATTER , in FRANK, distortion will once again be one of the main ingredients to generate material. In addition, Cherish will look into the action of decay and discover how something gradually breaking down and getting less or worse can be another attempt to distort a form or information.

Cherish received the Amsterdam FRINGE and FRINGE International Bursary Awards 2019 with JEZEBEL. JEZEBEL was selected in 2020 for both the Dutch and Flemish Theaterfestival, which presented a jury selection of the best performances of the season and received the prestigious Charlotte Köhler award by the Prins Bernhard Foundation (Amsterdam) in 2022.

DARKMATTER was selected for both the Belgian Theater Festival and its Dutch counterpart. With DARKMATTER, Cherish received the BNG Bank Theater Prize (2023) and the Dutch Drama Jury prize for best direction (2023).

For her artistic work, she is interested in the transformation of the body on stage and in the “embodiment” of different physical images. Implementing distortion, decay, and dissonance, Cherish attempts to detach bodies from forced perceptions and their daily corporeal realities, underlining the complexity and contradictory nature of images that seem recognizable at first glance. Glitching the ‘’common’’ lexical, the lexical of the speaking being, she seeks the Uncanny, the Enigmatic, and the Monstrous to give shape to – and materialize speculative forms and fictions.

Une île de danse

Fruit de la rencontre entre le chorégraphe Yvann Alexandre et la réalisatrice Doria Belanger, Une île de danse est un voyage sensoriel au cœur du mouvement dansé. Nourri par trente ans de création et les rencontres qui les ont portées, mêlant pièces de répertoire et conversations dansées, le film dresse autant le portrait d’un créateur que d’une communauté artistique, et de l’énergie qui en émane. Des bords de Loire aux toits de Tunis, en passant par les forêts enneigées du Québec, c’est tout un espace-temps aussi organique qu’humaniste qui se dessine sous nos yeux. Une ode à la rencontre, au lâcher-prise et à l’aventure collective, dans laquelle la danse, en s’affranchissant de la parole, invente un nouveau langage.

Le film est projeté dans le cadre de la programmation de Danser le Petit Champlain.

LA TIMIDITÉ DES CIMES

LA TIMIDITÉ DES CIMES est la nouvelle création de la compagnie Le fils d’Adrien danse. Cette co-création entre le chorégraphe Harold Rhéaume et le réalisateur Loup-William Théberge prend la forme d’un court-métrage de vidéo-danse nous plongeant dans un univers futuriste, où nous sommes témoins du parcours ambigu d’un être évoluant dans un univers en déclin. Avec en filigrane la disparition d’un certain rapport à la nature, cette œuvre cinématographique propose le regard introspectif d’un homme face à son parcours, ses multiples rencontres et son identité en tant qu’humain, mais aussi en tant qu’artiste.

Le film est projeté dans le cadre de la programmation de Danser le Petit Champlain.

Doria Belanger

Danseuse, chorégraphe et vidéaste, Doria Belanger s’est initialement formée à la danse contemporaine en tant que danseuse-interprète en France (formation Coline) et en Angleterre (London Contemporary Dance School), collaborant avec, entre autres, les Ballets C de la B, Mathilde Monnier, Emanuel Gat, Ben Duke ou plus récemment Mélanie Perrier au sein de la Compagnie 2Minimum.

Depuis 2015, elle développe un travail personnel qui se donne à voir sous la forme d’installations vidéo, de films dansés et de propositions chorégraphiques in situ. Ce chemin l’intéresse en ce qu’il permet de « capturer la danse », en conjurant la dimension éphémère du spectacle vivant tout en l’enrichissant d’une dimension picturale.

Sa première installation vidéo DONNEZ-MOI UNE MINUTE, projet fil rouge de portraits vidéo dansés, a déjà été présentée dans plus d’une vingtaine de théâtres et centres d’arts sensibles à la pluridisciplinarité, et notamment dans le cadre de la sélection officielle de Nuit Blanche Paris 2021.

Elle initie JOULE en 2020, une proposition consacrée à la notion d’énergie(s) mettant en résonance corps et environnement, qui se déploie sous la forme d’une installation vidéo et d’une pièce chorégraphique déambulatoire en espaces naturels. En 2023, parallèlement à la réalisation d’un nouveau film dansé, elle avance sur la création de son premier solo mêlant danse et vidéo live.