mockumentary
mockumentary is a seamless blending of dance, video, and music through lots of sweaty dancing, zombies, BMX bikes, and genre bending cinema. Performed by Zeke Keeble, Amy O’Neal, long time locust dancer Ellie Sandstrom, and five guest dance artists, the piece mischievously explores the act of self-mythology by interweaving cock-eyed, fictional scenarios that the performers develop about themselves. This experience is part “mockumentary,” part horror film, part dance/theater performance, part hip-hop video, and part rock show.
locust
locust is the dance/music/video performance brainchild of musician/composer Zeke Keeble and performer/choreographer Amy O’Neal. Since 2000, they have created 5 evening length works Leave me Inside (2001), Left-out (2002), DEFACE (2003), convenience (2005), mockumentary (2006), and crushed (2009). locust has performed in theaters, nightclubs, galleries, movie houses, and the streets. In Seattle, locust has been produced by On the Boards, the Seattle Art Museum, Experience Music Project, the Northwest Film Forum, Ten Tiny Dances (Portland/Seattle), Seattle Theater Group, Bumbershoot, and Velocity Dance Center. Nationally, locust has been presented by Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out (Becket, MA), The Myrna Loy Center (Helena, MT), Joyce Soho (New York, NY), T:BA Festival (Portland, OR), SUSHI Performing Arts (San Diego, CA), Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston, ME), and through SCUBA at ODC (San Francisco, CA) and The Southern Theater (Minneapolis, MN). locust invites performers on a project to project basis and has worked with some of the most distinctive and talented performers in Seattle. locust has been described as the avante guard garage band of the Seattle dance scene.
Amy O’Neal
Seattle, WA
Amy O’Neal is a performer, choreographer, dance educator, and the co-director of Seattle-based locust with musician/composer Zeke Keeble. Since 2000, locust has produced 6 evening length works and have toured to The Myrna Loy Center, Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, Joyce Soho, TBA Festival (’05 & ’09), Bates Dance Festival, University of Montana and SUSHI Performing Arts. Amy also produces work under the name AmyO/tinyrage. Her first project under this name, too, premiered at the TBA Festival in Portland, September 2009. Amy teaches contemporary dance technique, funk, and choreography regularly at Velocity Dance Center, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Cornish College of the Arts and the Dance This program. She has taught and/or conducted residencies at the University of Washington, University of Idaho, Idaho State University, University of Montana, Texas Woman’s University, University of Oregon, Cornish College of the Arts, and Dance New Amsterdam (NYC). Her work has been commissioned by Spectrum Dance Theater (’05 & ’08), Cornish Dance Theater, Moving Current (Tampa, FL), and Seattle Theatre Group (’05 & ’09). As a performer, she worked with the Pat Graney Co. (99—01), Scott/Powell Performance (97—04), and performed in Mark Haim’s acclaimed ”Goldberg Variations” (’06). Amy also frequently collaborates with musician/comedian Reggie Watts. She has performed in his show Disinformation at the TBA Festival, the Under the Radar Festival, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and ICA Boston. Amy has received funding from the Seattle Mayors Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, the international DanceWEB scholarship, the Mary Levine Fund, Artist Trust (GAP and Fellowship) , 4 Culture, the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, the National Dance Project, the National Performance Network and Creative Capital. Amy has been awarded creative residencies at Bates Dance Festival (’07), Headlands Center for the Arts (’08), and the US/Japan Choreographers Exchange through Dance Theater Workshop and the Japan Society in NYC (’09). Amy holds a BFA in dance from Cornish College of the Arts.
Zeke Keeble
Seattle, WA
Zeke Keeble has been playing music since he was seven years old. He grew up playing classical music and Latin percussion. Feeling constricted by popular interpretation of classical music, he attended Cornish College of the Arts to study Jazz. He has been gigging steadily in Seattle in the idioms of Jazz, Funk, Rock, Hip-Hop and Modern Dance since 1991, with people such as Julian Priester, Tim Young, Reggie Watts, Michael White, Harry Pierce, Eyvind Kang, Brent Arnold, Jeru the Damaja and members of Blind Melon and Pearl Jam. Zeke formed locust with dancer/choreographer Amy O’Neal in 2000, for which he has created over a dozen live/recorded scores. In 2002, he formed the band Marrow, a five-piece experimental pop band for which he wrote all the music. Zeke has also written music for major promotional software companies. Zeke is currently gigging in Seattle with his new band Moon Lander.