Grace Jones, 75, hula-hoops for 6 minutes straight at WeHo Pride — while Brigitte Nielsen looks on

In a true queens-respecting-queens moment, the ageless post-disco diva's equally statuesque famous friend was spotted “grooving” in the Outloud Festival VIP section.

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Grace Jones performs during Outloud @ WeHo Pride 2023 at West Hollywood Park on June 3, 2023 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo: Sarah Morris/WireImage)

You guys are the show!” iconic, ageless art-pop fusionist Grace Jones told the West Hollywood Park audience Saturday, as she headlined Los Angeles’s Outloud @ WeHo Pride festival. “I could just look at you, and not sing a word! But then I’d be crucified.”

Untruer words have never been spoken. First of all, Jones could have sat silently onstage in front of a canvas of slowly drying paint, and the adoring audience still would have been transfixed. And second, while the Outloud crowd came to slay in their Saturday best, all sequins and rainbows and glitter, that was nothing to Jones’s lewks. The androgynous chanteuse’s many rapidly rotating headpieces, all dutifully handed to her (along with an occasional goblet of “communion wine”) by her worshipful minions, included a Michael Schmidt-masterminded spiky sculpture of neon rods that seemed to float, like DNA helix, around her famously chiseled features; a rhinestoned Sally Bowles bowler hat; a waist-length Aphrodite wig fashioned from actual gold leaves; a plumed equestrian helmet; a royal Philip Treacy wedding hat and “little Keith Haring church outfit” for the fittingly titled “Amazing Grace”; and a fit-for-a-queen red, gold, and green striped headdress/caftan during “My Jamaican Guy.” And these space-age chapeaus were all paired with a molded suede corset, thigh-high stiletto boots, and a thong that revealed that Jones’s signature Haring bodypaint really did cover her entire body.

Grace Jones performs during Outloud @ WeHo Pride 2023 at West Hollywood Park on June 3, 2023 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo: Sarah Morris/WireImage)
Grace Jones performs during Outloud @ WeHo Pride 2023 at West Hollywood Park on June 3, 2023 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo: Sarah Morris/WireImage)

Oh, and then there was the finale moment when the post-disco diva, who incredibly turned 75 last month, purred her biggest hit, the Trevor Horn-produced “Slave to the Rhythm,” while spinning a hula hoop around her corseted torso. She never missed a beat or a note, and stayed true to that song’s “keep it up, keep it up” refrain by never dropping that hoop for the song's six-plus minutes, despite having already breathlessly performed for nearly an hour by that point.

And there was also a rare celebrity sighting, a true queens-respecting-queens moment, when Jones’s equally statuesque and high-cheekboned longtime friend, Brigitte Nielsen (Jones dated Nielsen’s Rocky IV co-star Dolph Lundgren in the early ‘80s), was — quite easily — spotted “grooving” in the VIP section.

While Jones’s Outloud set — which took place on a main stage that included earlier performances by Australian dreampop band Cub Sport, aughts electro-rock provocateur Santigold, RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars trailblazing trans winner Kylie Sonique Love, American Idol alumnus Rayvon Owen, and masked country crooner Orville Peck — did not boast the massive production of Jones’s other recent live tour de forces (including her previous L.A.-area concert at the Hollywood Bowl last September), her formidable presence was more than enough. In fact, her delightfully self-deprecating banter would have been worth the price of admission alone, and the relatively scaled-down presentation actually made her seem a little less formidable.

Grace Jones performs during Outloud @ WeHo Pride 2023 at West Hollywood Park on June 3, 2023 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images)
Grace Jones performs during Outloud @ WeHo Pride 2023 at West Hollywood Park on June 3, 2023 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images)

Jones relatably teetered in her five-inch heels, complaining about being unable to see her feet, as one of her genteel gentleman crew members assisted her down the stairs. When she and another assistant struggled to switch hats as her hair got in the way, Jones amusingly imagined aloud that she’d one day impulsively chop off her dreadlocks onstage and throw them into the audience. She even remarked, “I need a little bit more ass!” — doing a quick round of effortless squats as she pounding her bared, paint-scribbled butt on a stage riser — before performing her set's penultimate classic, “Pull Up to My Bumper,” while riding a security guard’s shoulders, victory-lap-style, across the West Hollywood Park field.

Grace Jones performs during Outloud @ WeHo Pride 2023 at West Hollywood Park on June 3, 2023 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo: Sarah Morris/WireImage)
Grace Jones performs during Outloud @ WeHo Pride 2023 at West Hollywood Park on June 3, 2023 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo: Sarah Morris/WireImage)

Grace Jones’s short but stunning Outloud @ WeHo Pride setlist is below. The festival, which kicked off Friday with Idina Menzel, Tinashe, and Jessie Ware, concludes Sunday with Carly Rae Jepsen, Passion Pit, Princess Nokia, and more.

“Nightclubbing”

“This Is”

“Private Life”

“My Jamaican Guy”

“Williams’s Blood”

“Amazing Grace”

“Love Is the Drug”

“Pull Up to the Bumper”

“Slave to the Rhythm”

Grace Jones performs during Outloud @ WeHo Pride 2023 at West Hollywood Park on June 3, 2023 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo: Sarah Morris/WireImage)
Grace Jones performs during Outloud @ WeHo Pride 2023 at West Hollywood Park on June 3, 2023 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo: Sarah Morris/WireImage)
Grace Jones's hula hoop is carefully packed in bubblewrap at the end of the night at Outloud @ WeHo Pride, like the international treasure it is. (Photo: Lyndsey Parker)
Grace Jones's hula hoop is carefully packed in bubblewrap at the end of the night at Outloud @ WeHo Pride, like the international treasure it is. (Photo: Lyndsey Parker)

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