American Realness

Lucy Sexton, Anne Iobst & Scott Heron

PRODIGAL HEROES
An evening of Legendary New York

FRI JAN 17 . 10:00 PM
SAT JAN 18 . 10:00 PM

Run time: 60 minutes

ABRONS ARTS CENTER UNDERGROUND THEATER
466 Grand Street / tickets $20

Single Tickets Festival Pass

LUCY SEXTON, The Factress

The Factress, aka Lucy Sexton began life as the host of The Lucy Show, a live talk show and performance revue that occurred randomly in NY during the late 90s and early 00s. The show was co-hosted by Nurse Baby Asparagus, aka Mike Iveson. The Factress is part stand up, part performance artist, all seriocomic psychopolitical commentator. She has taken her brand of avant-humor to Performance Space 122, LaMama, The Howl Festival, Brisol Old Vic (UK), and the Salzburg Festival (AUSTRIA).

ANNE IOBST, The Naked Lady

Anne Iobst has been performing as The Naked Lady since 2002, appearing most notably in The Lucy Show, and most recently Yvonne’s Meier’s The Shining. With Lucy Sexton, Iobst created the Bessie Award-winning dance performance group DANCENOISE in 1983, which performed in New York and around the world and hosted a weekly performance series at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut.

SCOTT HERON, Lights up a tragedy New York Premiere

A regular of the 80’s NYC East Village scene, Scott Heron brings a new solo to the American Realness stage. Wading into the waters of willing self-embarrassment with a Shirley Temple drive to please, Lights Up a Tragedy finds Heron thwarted by the limitations of his cranky body. He embodies the dancer while reveling in sheer joyful abandon to camouflage fake sadness. Rigorously anti-conceptual, Heron asks the audience to support him fully as he gives his everything. How high can that spandex creep up his tiny ass?

SPECIAL FINALE BY DANCENOISE!!!


Scott Heron + Anne Iobst, Movement Research at Judson Church February 26, 1996


Created & Performed by Lucy Sexton, Anne Iobst & Scott Heron

Lucy Sexton (The Factress) formed the dance performance duo DANCENOISE with Anne Iobst in 1983. Charles Atlas came to a show of theirs in 1986 and the three have been friends and collaborators ever since. Sexton has worked as a producer on two of Atlas’s films: The Legend of Leigh Bowery and TURNING with Antony and the Johnsons. She is also the Director of the NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies.

DANCENOISE is Anne Iobst and Lucy Sexton. They began making dance-based performance art in 1983, performing in many New York nightclubs and theaters including WOW Café, the Pyramid, 8BC, Performance Space 122, Franklin Furnace, and the Kitchen. They hosted a weekly cabaret for many years at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in the East Village. DANCENOISE went on to perform at Lincoln Center, tour and teach nationally and internationally, and win a New York Dance and Theater Bessie Award.  Touring highlights include the Phenomenon Festival in Jerusalem, Israel; Queer Up North at the Green Room in Manchester, UK;  Vienna Fest Wochen in Vienna; Mayfest in Glasgow, Scotland; New York Live in Osaka, Japan; and numerous performances in squatted houses across Europe in the early 80s.

Anne Iobst also performs her own choreography as the Naked Lady, recently appearing in Yvonne Meier’s The Shining.

Scott Heron (performer) has been dancing and making dances for over 30 years. He started at Colorado College and then stumbled into Deborah Hay in Austin. He has studied and performed with her extensively over the years and is featured in both of her books. In New York from the mid-80s to the turn of the century, he was a founding member of Circus Amok and a regular on the downtown dance, improv and performance scene, working with Jennifer Monson, Yvonne Meier, Sarah East Johnson, Linda Austin, Sarah Schulman, Sally Silvers, and countless others. His own work has been produced by PS 122 many times and also at the Kitchen, Dixon Place and DTW. In 2003 hereceived a Bessie Award. For 10 years he has had an ongoing collaboration with HIJACK the Minneapolis duo Kristin Van Loon and Arwen Wilder. They have toured up and down the Mississipi River and in NYC, Colorado and Russia. He just completed a sporadic 2-year world tour of “Like me more like me” a duet made in collaboration with Brussels-based Thomas Hauert/Zoo. For the past 11 years he has been based in New Orleans, where he makes dances, gardens and hosts occasional shows at the Sidearm Gallery, a little theater in his house. More info and contact: www.scottheron.org