A woman charges onto the stage dressed in a fur coat, a gold necklace and long manicured nails. She slowly slides to the floor then crawls to the front of the stage. This is the start of Jezebel, the first creation by the Dutch dancer and choreographer Cherish Menzo. The title refers to the biblical character of Jezebel who has become synonymous with seduction and lust. Cherish Menzo’s Jezebel is inspired by another disparaged female model, the Video Vixens. They were the scantily dressed black women who from the 1990s to the early 2000s danced sensuously in hip-hop clips, flattering the ego of rappers who largely dominated that music industry. Jezebel is the story of the emancipation of Video Vixens, losing the status they were confined to as accessories and instead becoming central to the project. On stage, Cherish Menzo unveils the score of their emancipation by increasing references to hip-hop’s hackneyed stereotypes and fantasies, making light of them and appropriating them as their own. Now Jezebel refuses to be defined by others and joyfully works on bursting the expectations of our pre-programmed views.

See also: Kids
 

Confronted with the SARS-CoV-2 crisis, we had to cancel this project