Cherish Menzo

Cherish Menzo (°1988, The Netherlands) is a performing artist and choreographer based in Amsterdam and Brussels. 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, she seeks the Uncanny, the Enigmatic, and the Monstrous to give shape to–and materialize speculative forms and fictions.

Cherish graduated in 2013 from The Urban Contemporary program (JMD) of the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Amsterdam and danced in productions by choreographers such as Eszter Salamon, Akram Khan, Leo Lerus, Hanzel Nezza, Benjamin Kahn, Olivier Dubois, Ula Sickle, Lisbeth Gruwez, Jan Martens, and Nicole Beutler. She has been creating her own work since 2016: EFES (2016–together with Nicole Geertruida), LIVE (2018–with Müşfik CanMüftüoğlu), JEZEBEL (2019), DARKMATTER (2022) and KILLED AND EXTENDED DARLINGS: SUBTLE WHINE in the frame of the research program Welcome To Our Guesthouse (2023-ProductiehuisTheater Rotterdam). Currently she isworking on FRANK (premiering May 2025.

She 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 Juryprize for best direction (2023). In October 2024 she won the Gieskes-Strijbi sPodium Prize 2024, the Netherlands' largest stage prize, aimed at mid-career makers who contribute to the quality and diversity of the performing arts in the Netherlands.

Cherish Menzo is one of GRIP’s artistic leaders. GRIP is a dance organisation led by choreographers Femke Gyselinck, Jan Martens, Steven Michel and Cherish herself.)

Photo: Yagine Hamzaoui