How to show stereotypes of black masculinity without stereotyping black men? The issue comes up very early in Ivan Michael Blackstock’s Traplord, a dance, music, spoken word and video event that winds around themes of race, men and mental health. We’re in an industrial basement throbbing with low sound, the darkness pierced by searchlights that pick out figures sporting hoodies, puffer jackets and odd bits of bling. They flit from militaristic squadron to combative tussle, occasionally shooting fingers like pistols. It’s menacing, highly effective and awash with cliche. Crucially, though, we know it’s a mask – not only because it later becomes clear that some of the dancers are women, but more immediately because everyone is in blackface.
Black skin, black masks: this volatile conjunction is freighted with significance and dramatic possibility. Indeed the whole show is shot through with a sense of double vision. Back-projections show video game graphics, their animated, role-played characters forming counterparts to those on stage. As one performer krumps before a mirror, her image comes to look less like a reflection than a sparring partner. A floppy ragdoll dummy is substituted by dancer Kanah Flex, the contortions of his impossibly loose limbs expressive of more interior, psychological torsions.
