Programmed as part of the incredible Live Collision festival, Rachael Young’s explosive Nightclubbing hits the city tonight. Those looking for a visceral live music fix coupled with a revolutionary energy need look no further.

Nightclubbing celebrates the power of Grace Jones intertwined with the story of young women who were the victims of discrimination. Rachael explained: “The show is about an incident which happened in a London nightclub in 2015 where these women were refused entry based on the colour of their skin and their body size. This got me thinking about the policing of women’s bodies and intersectional feminism and, more largely, about which type of people in society are deemed to be more desirable.

“This led me on a quest to think that, beyond ‘everyday’ people, which people in the media had managed to transcend these Western-centric ideas of what beauty is?”

This journey almost naturally led Rachael to the legendary Grace Jones, who incidentally also has an album called Nightclubbing. The show parallels Jones’ rise to fame, working as a model in an industry which told her that her features didn’t ‘fit’, with the story of these women discriminated against because of how they looked.

Rachael also explained how the show embraces Afrofuturism, which is “a way of looking at the past and where we are now and then imagining a different, more hopeful future where some of the prejudices we face will hopefully no longer exist.”

Welding the power of Jones to the sonic brilliance of a live band and the electricity of performance, Rachael ensures the audience will definitely feel invigorated afterwards. Alongside this, says Young, she would also “like people to feel hopeful when they leave, to perhaps see the world differently.”

She continued, “I hope that some people will feel seen. And for those who feel like the work doesn’t centre them, maybe that’s an interesting thing to ponder on as well. And maybe feel like they can be a bit more vocal the next time they see someone being misogynist towards a woman or being a bit more open to what womanhood looks like in terms of its different identities.”

Taking over the Project Arts Centre tonight, tickets are available here.