Grace Jones was amazing Saturday afternoon in Central Park. Jones performed for about an hour at New York's SummerStage, wooing the audience with her hits and titillating them with her performance.

She began the show by climbing up a set of oversized stage stairs while she was dressed in a huge haute couture hat and red cape. She soon dismissed the hat and cape and began a performance that included half a dozen outfit changes -- one for each song. For one song, she wore a blonde wig. For another song, she wore a black wig, which she tossed into the audience.

For her signature song, "Pull Up to My Bumper," Jones wore a black hoop dress, climbed to the top of the elevated stage stairs, turned her back to the audience, lifted her dress, and shook her butt cheeks to the rhythm. For another song, she wore a metallic blue breastplate, which she removed several times to expose her naked bosom and entice the audience.

Then she introduced her mother, cousins and brother, most of whom were conservatively dressed, and brought them on stage. Who else but Grace Jones could expose her breasts to a screaming audience of fans in front of her mother?

Jones commanded the audience's attention, at one point refusing to sing until everyone in the audience clapped. At another point, she descended from the stage, climbed over a fence, and strolled through the audience, walking over blankets and sheets that crowd members had placed over the grass.

The comments from the audience were almost as amusing as the show itself. "I heard she was strung out on drugs and wasn't performing," one person said. Another whispered, "Only Grace Jones could take five hit songs and make a career out of them." Later, audience members spontaneously bursted out in a chant of "DI-VA, DI-VA, DI-VA."

And in a flash, she was gone.

© Copyright 2002 by Keith Boykin.