We are thrilled to continue our collaboration with Moving in November, a yearly contemporary dance event in the Helsinki area. In previous editions, we supported Cherish Menzo’s JEZEBEL and DARKMATTER. This year, we are excited to support Menzo’s performance FRANK, the final work in her trilogy, as well as Brussels-based dancer and choreographer Soa Ratsifandrihan‘s performance Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna.
Moving in November presents: FRANK by Cherish Menzo
10.11. at 20:00
11.11. at 20:00
Duration: 1h 30min
Language: English, French
Please note: The performance contains full blackouts, stroboscopic lights, theatre fog, loud voices and music. There is a lot of talk about death in the texts and one of the songs of the show refers to colonialism. Lyrics of that song refer to killing human children.
Tickets €17 / €33
Festival pass €55
Moving in November website.
Somewhere between the ritual, the apocalypse, and the carnival, is FRANK – also short for Frankenstein. In this performance, choreographer Cherish Menzo continues the quest of distortion of the familiar, this time through investigations on decay, breaking down, collapse; and, quite frankly, the figure of the monster. Rather than (re)producing a recognizable portrayal of the monster, Menzo researches the monstruous as an embodiment of beliefs and narratives that terrify and horrify, and yet also attract us. The performance space fabulates on the Baka Gorong, a place where enslaved people in Suriname secretly went to carry out Winti rituals – demonized under Dutch colonial rule. Four performers on the stage, Menzo is joined by Omagbitse Omagbemi, Mulunesh, and Malick Cissé to construct a performance where narrated identities are challenged, where flesh can deviate and be corrupted until it bursts and becomes unbearable.
This performance is part of Moving in November 6.-16.11.2025. As part of the festival, there will be an open Soup Talks discussion with Menzo and local host on the 11th of November at noon in Caisa.
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 materialise speculative forms and fictions.
Cherish 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. She has been creating her own work since 2016: EFES (2016 – together with Nicole Geertruida), LIVE (2018 – with Müşfik Can Müftüoğlu), JEZEBEL (2019), DARKMATTER (2022) and KILLED AND EXTENDED DARLINGS: SUBTLE WHINE in the frame of the research program Welcome To Our Guesthouse (2023) (Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam).
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 Jury prize for best direction (2023). In October 2024 she won the Gieskes-Strijbis Podium 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.
Credits
Concept, direction: Cherish Menzo
Creation, performance: Malick Cissé, Mulunesh, Omagbitse Omagbemi, Cherish Menzo
Sound design: Maria Muehombo a.k.a M I M I
Video design: Andrea Casetti
Sound and video engineering: Arthur De Vuyst
Set design: Morgana Machado Marques
Lighting design: Ryoya Fudetani
Dramaturgy: Johanne Affricot, Renée Copraij
Costumes: Cherish Menzo
Text: Khadija El Kharraz Alami, Cherish Menzo
Artistic advice: Khadija El Kharraz Alami, Nicole Geertruida
Surtitles: Jennifer Piasecki
Technician on tour: Pieter-Jan Buelens, Arthur De Vuyst, Ryoya Fudetani, Hadrien Jeangette
Graphic design: Nick Mattan
Thanks to: Mildred Caprino, Anne Goedhart, Rodney Frederik & Winti Formation “Krin Ati,” Daryll Geldrop, Ernie Wolf, Sandra Menzo, Shavelie Menzo, Madeleine Planeix-Crocker, Sarah Garnaud, Alice Bröker, Johanna Cool, Anne de Andrade, Victor Dumont, Keiko Yamaguchi, Haruna Tanaka, Sensei Taneda, Ima Tenko
Production: GRIP & Theater Utrecht (Dagmar Bokma, Anne Breure, Maartje de Groot, Teun de Loos, Philip den Uyl, Hanne Doms, Seline Gosling, Anneleen Hermans, Tom Hemmer, Leonie Jekel, Myrthe Ligtenberg, Thomas Lloyd, Rudi Meulemans, Lize Meynaerts, Klaartje Oerlemans, Jennifer Piasecki, Florien Smits, Sylvie Svanberg, Bregt van Deursen, Ad van Mierlo, Yoni Vermeire, Nele Verreyken Vincent Wijlhuizen)
In collaboration with: Dance On Ensemble / Bureau Ritter
International distribution: A propic – Line Rousseau, Marion Gauvent
Co-production: Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Carreau du Temple – Etablissement culturel et sportif de la Ville de Paris, Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam, Julidans Amsterdam, PACT Zollverein funded by the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Festival Montpellier Danse 2025, le Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans – Direction Maud Le Pladec, Tanzquartier Wien, DDD – Festival Dias da Dança, festival d’Automne à Paris, One Dance Festival, Perpodium
With the support of: Centre nationale de la danse à Pantin, BRONKS, KWP Kunstenwerkplaats, l’Atelier de Paris – Centre de développement chorégraphique national
With the financial support of: the Flemish Government, Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government via Cronos Invest, BNG Bank Theaterprijs, Charlotte Köhler Prijs van het Cultuurfonds, Culture Moves Europe, a project funded by the European Union and the Goethe-Institut
Photo: Bas De Brouwer
Visit in collaboration: Stoa
Visit supported by: Government of Flanders, The Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux
Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna by Soa Ratsifandrihana. Photo by Harilay Rabenjamina.
Moving in November presents: Soa Ratsifandrihana – Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna
15.11. at 20:00
16.11. at 17:00
Stoa, Turunlinnantie 1, 00900 Helsinki
Duration: 1h 30min
Language: French, Malagasy and Haitian Creole, English subtitles
Tickets €17 / €33
Festival pass €55
Moving in November website.
Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna means “comparison, transmission, rivalry” in Malagasy. On stage, four bodies defy one another, choose each other and purge themselves of the layers of violence that constitute them. Presented as a line of rediscovered dialogue between the children of diasporas and their places of origin, Fampitaha, fampita, fampitána formulates a plural narrative in which the fragmentation of these experiences is as vibrant as their reappropriation. In this quartet, choreographer Soa Ratsifandrihana seeks a vocabulary between bodies and history to better understand what links and separates them. Together with her team, guitarist Joël Rabesolo and performers Audrey Merilus and Stanley Ollivier, Ratsifandrihana constructs a new otherness in which bodies emerge from their muteness, offering themselves the possibility of language. Written out before us is a story of bodies that would never have left their islands and together shape a parade of exiles.
This performance is part of Moving in November 6.-16.11.2025. As part of the festival, there will be an open Soup Talks discussion with Ratsifandrihana and local host on the 16th of November in Eskus.
Soa Ratsifandrihana
Soa Ratsifandrihana is a Franco-Malagasy dancer and choreographer based in Brussels. After studying at the CNSMD in Paris, Soa worked with James Thierrée, Salia Sanou and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. In 2021, she presented her first solo, g r oo v e in Brussels. The show has been performed more than 60 times and continues to tour in Europe, Canada, Asia and soon in Madagascar. In spring 2024, Soa presented a diptych comprising a radio creation, Rouge cratère, and the performance Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna. Following on from her first solo, she explores the possible intersections between different media, from radio storytelling to choreographic and musical composition. Her practice reminds us that our bodies, like our words, are the bearers of stories which, however we choose to communicate them, must be told. Soa is artist-in-residence at the Kaaitheater in Belgium.
Credits
Artistic direction: Soa Ratsifandrihana
Choreography and interpretation: Audrey Merilus, Stanley Ollivier, Soa Ratsifandrihana
Footwork phrase: Raza
Original music and interpretation: Joël Rabesolo
Dramaturgy: Lily Brieu Nguyen
Artistic collaboration: Jérémie Polin Razanaparany aka Raza, Amelia Ewu, Thi Mai Nguyen
Light design: Marie-Christine Soma
Costumes: Harilay Rabenjamina
Costume assistance: l’Atelier Costumes du Théâtre Varia – Fabienne Damiean, Baptiste Alexandre, Marie-Céline Debande
Sound design: Chloé Despax, Guilhem Angot
Insight on questions of transmission and identity: Prisca Ratovonasy
Texts: Sékou Sémega
Outside eye: Maria Dogahe
Tour manager: Thomas Roulleau-Gallais
Lighting manager: Diane Guérin, Julien Rauche (alternating)
Sound manager: Guilhem Angot, Paul Boulier, Jean-Louis Walfart (alternating)
Development, distribution, production: ama brussels – Babacar Ba, Clara Schmitt, Emi Parot, France Morin
Delegated production: ama brussels, Théâtre Varia
In collaboration with: Météores
Co-production: Kaaitheater, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Théâtre Varia, Charleroi danse, MC93 — Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis, ICI – Centre Chorégraphique National Montpellier Occitanie / Direction Christian Rizzo, Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans-direction Maud Le Pladec, Le Gymnase-CDCN Roubaix, La Place de la Danse-CDCN Toulouse / Occitanie, Fonds Yavarhoussen, Tanz im August / HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Fonds Transfabrik – fonds franco-allemand pour le spectacle vivant, La Coop asbl, Shelter Prod.
A-CDCN (Les Hivernales – CDCN d’Avignon, La Manufacture – CDCN Nouvelle- Aquitaine Bordeaux · La Rochelle, L’échangeur – CDCN Hauts-de-France, Le Dancing CDCN Dijon Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Chorège CDCN Falaise Normandie, Le Pacifique – CDCN Grenoble – Auvergne – Rhône- Alpes, Touka Danses – CDCN Guyane, Atelier de Paris / CDCN, Le Gymnase CDCN Roubaix – Hauts- de-France, POLE-SUD CDCN / Strasbourg, La Place de la Danse – CDCN Toulouse / Occitanie, La Maison Danse CDCN Uzès Gard Occitanie, La briqueterie CDCN du Val-de-Marne).
Residencies: ICI – CCN Montpellier Occitanie, La Bellone – Maison du
Spectacle, Gemeenschapscentrum De Kriekelaar, Université d’Antananarivo, KAAP, Le Gymnase-CDCN Roubaix, Théâtre Varia, CCN d’Orléans, Radio Grenouille.
With the support of: Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels and Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles – Direction de la danse, Wallonie-Bruxelles International, taxshelter.be, ING et tax shelter du gouvernement fédéral belge.
Thanks to: Julie Iarisoa, Makwa Joma, Arikaomisa Randria, Naivo, Maria Dogahe, Jonathan, Do sy Bodo, Rado
Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna premiered at Kunstenfestivaldesarts Brussels in May 2024.
Photo: Harilay Rabenjamina
Visit in collaboration: Stoa
Visit supported by: The Government of Flanders, WBI Wallonie-Bruxelles International, The Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux