FRANK

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.

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.

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 how something gradually breaking down and getting less or worse can be another attempt to distort a form or information.

FRANK, will be the closing of a trilogy. A trilogy that does not consist of chronological storytelling or a series of events, but maybe more a trifold of spaces, universes, fictions, and conversations that regard Blackness, bringing the Black body to the center and attempting to explore the African Diaspora's multi-intersections in recognizable, metaphorical, and abstract ways. Enter (the world behind) FRANK and read the essay by Madeleine Planeix-Crocker.

Language no problem. With English surtitles.