The late 90s: a time of hedonism and questionable sexual politics, ladettes boasting about going to lapdancing clubs, and “video vixens” on MTV: the bikini-clad harem beloved of rappers who would label them bitches while the camera salivated over their slo-mo gyrations. These “hip-hop honeys” are the inspiration for Dutch dance artist Cherish Menzo’s Jezebel, a deconstruction, or maybe detonation, of this hypersexualised image of black women.
Menzo is not about to get the party started. Jezebel’s soundtrack, by Michael Nunes, is a low, sinister rumble that makes for a wholly unsettling hour. She comes dressed in pink PVC shorts, a crop top, white fur coat and fake nails that double the length of her fingers. As she crouches on the stage, those tendril-like nails become scuttling spiders legs, sending a shiver down your spine. She has a camera sending close-up images to the screen behind her: lips painted in purple glitter, wet pink tongue emerging like a sea creature. She’s atomising the image, pulling apart its power with disgust and ridicule. She takes some of the vixen’s moves, kneeling on the floor, quietly bouncing her booty, asking us to think about what we see, what a body means, as you hear the squeak of her PVC pants.
Most powerful is when Menzo puts up on screen the lyrics to Nas and Bravehearts’ Oochie Wally, an abject lesson in male fantasy and female objectification, including the lines: “He really really tried to hurt me hurt me / I really love his thug and gangsta style.” It turns the stomach. But when bluntly exposing the lyrics alone is enough to make the point, what does Menzo add, beyond a doom-laden atmosphere and an ambiguous central figure?
Menzo is a bold performer, she’s got nerve, she’s got a very still steeliness about her and she’s got important things to say, but there’s not really an hour’s worth of material here. It’s one of those shows more interesting to debate and write about than to watch. But maybe that’s a valid result for someone whose aim is to make you think.
• At Battersea Arts Centre, London, until 14 Oct, then Fierce festival, Birmingham, on 16 Oct.
