Bodies in Distortion: Choreographing the Monstrous, the Unstable, and the Unspoken explores choreography as a space where bodies can resist fixed identities, normative representation and systems of control.

Drawing on contemporary artistic practices that engage with distortion, fragmentation, ritual and transformation, the seminar examines how dance can challenge established ideas of race, gender and embodiment. What happens when the body cannot be easily defined or read? What perspectives and forms of knowledge might emerge?

The conversation brings together artists whose practices move between the human and the monstrous, visibility and disappearance, vulnerability and resistance. Together, they explore how choreography can create space for complexity, multiple perspectives and new ways of imagining, and how performance might offer collective rituals for confronting experiences and histories of violence, alienation and exclusion.

Panelist:

• Cherish Menzo (Netherlands/Belgium): Choreographer and dancer based in Brussels and Amsterdam. Her work tours internationally and is characterised by a powerful movement language. She has collaborated with artists including Lisbeth Gruwez, Jan Martens, Nicole Beutler, Akram Khan, Ula Sickle, Olivier Dubois and Eszter Salamon.
• Sulekha Ali Omar (Norway): Independent choreographer, dancer and actor with over a decade of experience. She holds a BA in Dance and an MA in Choreography from Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) and is a recipient of the Hedda Award. Her work explores human relationships, social structures, minority-majority dynamics and identity, including through her self-developed method “Social Improvisation”.
• Mohamed Mohamed (Norway): Performer and artist with a BA from Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) and studies at Nordic Black Xpress. His work includes The healing process is triggering, nominated for the Sandefjord Kunstforening Art Prize 2025, You have started singing again at Bodø Biennale 2024, and the installation Amm Mørket at the 2025 Autumn Exhibition (Høstutstillingen).

Moderator:

• Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor (USA/Norway): is an artist-researcher working with text, dialogue, archives and moving images. Her roots are in the Southern United States, born in Mississippi and bred in Florida on former Timucan land. Her work centers on themes of ritual, social politics and identity mythology of Black and Indigenous folks. Taylor is currently researching death and mourning practices across the African diaspora as part of her PhD fellowship at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

In collaboration with Fritt Ord, MUNCH, KHiO, Delegation of Flanders in the Nordic Countries.