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. Images seem recognisable at first glance, but by highlighting their complexity and contradiction, Cherish questions the apparent norm and creates universes in which the black body stands central. She floats between the nostalgia of 1990s and 2000s hip-hop, industrial hip-hop, rap lyrics, sci-fi, manga and speculative futures. Using these elements as tools to give shape and materialise uncanny, enigmatic forms and realities. She graduated in 2013 from The Urban Contemporary program (JMD) of the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Amsterdam and since 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. Besides performing in other people’s productions, she has been creating her own work for the last seven years: EFES (2016 – together with Nicole Geertruida), LIVE (2018 – with Müşfik Can Müftüoğlu) and JEZEBEL (2019), the predecessor to <s>DARK</s>MATTER. Since 2018 she also performs the solo Sorry, But I Feel Slightly Disidentified… by choreographer Benjamin Kahn. A performance which resulted from a close collaboration that started in 2017. The work of Cherish is supported and produced by GRIP and Frascati Producties.