Queen Of The Night

By turning a party into a boundary-pushing platform, DJ and producer Venus X ignited an after-hours revolution. Rebecca Bengal hits the club.

It’s 2 a.m. on a Saturday in late July, and Jazmin Venus Soto, better known as Venus X, darts about the pink-and-purple-lit stage at the Polonaise Terrace, a former banquet hall in the Green point neighborhood of Brooklyn. Here, a diverse crowd of downtown designers, models, and outer-borough cool kids has converged, sporting vintage raincoats, metal cuffs and chains, and Adidas baseball shirts. They are lured to this weekly party known as GHE20G0TH1K as much by the eminently affordable $10 cover charge as by its mission to make marginalized voices—gay, lesbian, trans, black, brown—heard loud and clear. The music quick-shifts between dark wave and Chicago footwork, remixed Dirty South rap and the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack.” Tonight’s featured performer is Mhysa, a self-described queer, black femme musician—and the alter ego of E. Jane, a multimedia artist from Philadelphia. Dressed in a black tube top, hot pants, lug-soled ankle boots, and a pink studded dog collar, Mhysa drapes herself at the edge of the stage and delivers a set that veers between dance-ready numbers from her debut album and songs that fuse a chanteuse, R&B slow-burn vibe with arch social media self-awareness, addressed to her “Bb.” Venus X’s smile is enormous and excited. Soon, the floor has grown packed and sweaty, and, by three o’clock, girls and boys are tossing their bags in a pile, dancing exuberantly around them, caught up in the glorious, high-octane moment.