DANCENOISE explores female body politics in Bread and Circus (1985). In these photos taken during a dress rehearsal, DANCENOISE (Lucy Sexton and Anne Iobst) engage in a series of haptic movements wearing various costumes and interacting with female sex dolls. The kitchen becomes a site-specific context for these acts, in addition to being a site of women’s liberation and empowerment. Through a queer-feminist lens, the performers critique ideals of femininity and patriarchal representations of women. Together DANCENOISE conjures a radical agenda that explodes social constructions of female identity in American culture.
DANCENOISE is a dance-based performance art group created by Anne Iobst and Lucy Sexton. Since 1983 they have performed throughout New York City nightclubs and theaters including WOW Café Theatre, Pyramid Club, 8BC, PS122, Franklin Furnace, the Kitchen, and Lincoln Center, and also hosted a weekly cabaret for many years during the 80s at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in the East Village. DANCENOISE has performed, taught, and toured nationally and internationally at the Phenomenon Festival (Jerusalem); Queer Up North (Manchester); Vienna Fest Wochen (Vienna); Mayfest (Glasgow); New York Live (Osaka); and numerous squatted houses across Europe in the early 80s. The group received a New York Dance and Theater Bessie Award for their performance All the Rage at PS122 in 1989. In 2015 DANCENOISE was invited to exhibit a weeklong retrospective at the new Whitney in Chelsea and to inaugurate the museum’s theater with an installation and performance. The New Yorker's theatre critic, Hilton Als, hails DANCENOISE as "One of the best performances I’ve attended in ages … DANCENOISE reminded us of what joy felt like as they took apart serious issues."