Helsinki Archives - Dancephere

Cherish Menzo’s New Work

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.

February 19th – 22nd, 2025 Aviva Studios, Manchester
February 26th – March 1st, 2025, Amare, The Hague
March 6th – 7th, 2025 Stadsschouwburg, Utrecht
March 11th – 12th, 2025 Parkstad Limburg Theaters, Heerlen
March 15th – 16th, 2025 Theater Rotterdam, Rotterdam
March 19th, 2025 Parktheater, Eindhoven
March 26th – 29th, 2025 Internationaal Theater, Amsterdam
April 8th – 11th, 2025 Tanssin Talo, Helsinki
June 18th – 20th, 2025 Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Luxembourg
June 25th – 27th, 2025 Montpellier Danse, Montpellier
July 4th – 6th, 2025 Deutsche Oper Berlin, Berlin
August 22nd – 24th, 2025 Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh
October 22nd – 30th, 2025 Théâtre de la Ville, Paris

approx. 150 minutes

THE Urgent Dance Trilogy

Pite and McBurney were transfixed when they saw each other’s work. But it was the ecological theme with which they found common cause. “Straight away we decided we wanted to make something centred on the climate crisis,” says Pite. “Which is not,” stresses McBurney, “separable from human crisis. We are all inescapably part of this living world.”
Sanjoy Roy (The Guardian)

We are living in an age of extinction. Can we ever hope to give a name to what we are losing? What does it mean to bear witness to a violence in which we are both perpetrator and victim?

Across continents, choreographer Crystal Pite and Complicité Artistic Director Simon McBurney have exchanged ideas reflecting on their fears and cautious hopes for our age. Their process has drawn on a rich and surprising array of source materials: from the sound of ice caps melting to the clarion calls of climate change deniers, from scholastic lectures on the neuroscience of the brain to the cacophonous clatter of Instagram influencers.

Over a span of four years, the two world-renowned artists have created three works together for NDT 1, each developed in response to the last. Figures in Extinction [1.0] confronts us with everything that is dying on our planet, while [2.0] is a searing examination of our need for connection in a separated world. The third and final work will continue this cross-disciplinary exchange, making its world premiere in the UK in February 2025, and will offer a spark in the darkness as to where we – collectively, spiritually, and imaginatively – might go next.

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