Jezebel review

Netherlands-based Cherish Menzo’s revisionist dance-theatre solo launches Battersea Arts Centre’s autumn season in strong style. The chief source of inspiration for this wild ride of a show is the so-called ‘video vixens’ of 1990s hip hop – women, also referred to as hip-hop honeys, whose submissive and fetishistically sexualised presence featured heavily in the background of the era’s male-dominated music videos. Jezebel – the title is knowingly telling – is a ritualistic attempt to redress the balance by reclaiming symbolic ownership of those Black female bodies, freeing them from the reductive and stereotypical depictions imposed by the male gaze.

The performance is slow-burn, serious in intent, yet entertaining. Menzo only gradually allows us to grasp what a sensationally good presence she is – lanky, androgynous and undulant, with a fabulously expressive face. We first see her static on a bicycle, bathed in foggy, blue LED light and wearing a hooded, polar bear-like jacket – like an animal hiding in its own fur. After parking the bike in slow motion, she melts to the floor, unfurling and interlacing long fingers adorned with two-inch, white artificial nails. She twitches them spiderishly and shifts further downstage, positioning herself before a miniature camera. Looming behind her now is a screen close-up of her mouth, all glittering purple lips and gangsta tooth bling. It pouts, splits, gapes open or puckers as spit suggestively dribbles out.  

This image – lurid and seductive, yet horrible – is probably the show’s most memorable. But Menzo has other tricky, provocative ideas up her sleeve. Eventually she sheds the coat, revealing tight, pink PVC shorts and top, and bare legs in tube socks above trainers. A hidden mic leads to distorted, semi-intelligible renditions of the lyrics to Nas and Braveheart’s track Oochie Wally (which are, usefully, readable as a projection). Menzo’s physicality is admirably on display: she squats and twerks, swivel-steps and scissors her legs but, also, for a brief but striking spell, just lies on her side, as though exhausted by misogynistic pressure.

Subsequent sections of the performance might seem overindulgent. There’s a longish, potentially alienating stretch featuring strobe lighting, with the audio volume blastingly high (the venue thoughtfully provides earplugs and noise-cancelling headphones). But, even here, there are welcome pockets of wit. Towards the end of the hour, Menzo slips into a voluminous, shiny, cone-breasted inflatable costume to deliver an annihilating rendition of Jay-Z’s Big Pimpin’, her camera-magnified face gurning furiously as dry ice splurges out into the stage space. The excess may be anger-fuelled but, as with the show as a whole, it is also funny, engaging and purging.