About Amy O’Neal
Amy O’Neal is a dancer, performer, choreographer, and dance educator. Under the fluid moniker, AmyO/tinyrage, she has been presented by the TBA Festival (Portland) , On the Boards Northwest New Works Festival (Seattle) , Northwest Film Forum, Seattle Theater Group/The Moore, Project Motion (Memphis), Bumbershoot (Seattle), and Velocity Dance Center (Seattle). From 2000-2010, Amy was co-director of locust (music/dance/video) with musician/composer Zeke Keeble. locust was presented by On the Boards (Seattle), Seattle Theater Group/The Moore, The Myrna Loy Center (Helena), Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out (Becket), Joyce Soho (NYC), TBA Festival (Portland), Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston), University of Montana (Missoula), SUSHI (San Diego), the Southern Theater (Minneapolis), Next Dance Cinema (Seattle), ODC Theater (San Francisco), Kyoto Arts Center (Kyoto), Next Moment Film Festival (Tokyo), and UNAM Danza sin Fronteras (Mexico City).
Since 2002, Amy has frequently collaborated with musician/comedian, Reggie Watts. She choreographed for “A Very Reggie Christmas” at On the Boards and has improvised with him in Seattle and NYC at The Triple Door, Bumbershoot, Gallapagos and Comix. She performed in his show “Disinformation” at the TBA Festival (Portland), Under the Radar Festival (NYC), Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburg), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and ICA Boston. She choreographed for Reggie’s music video “Fuck, Shit, Stack” released through Comedy Central in 2010 and performed in “Reggiedency” at the San Francisco Sketchfest in 2013. She choreographed for LA based electro pop artist Jules Leotard for the video “Body Builder” and danced in the official music video for “Iridescent Asteroid Mists (Feat. Palaceer Lazaro) by Seattle based electronic artist, Vox Mod.
Amy danced with the Pat Graney Company, Scott/Powell Performance, and in Mark Haim’s acclaimed “Goldberg Variations”. Amy was the lead singer of Zeke Keeble’s band Marrow and sung in the Seattle based David Bowie cover band, Heroes. Amy’s work has been commissioned twice by Spectrum Dance Theater/Donald Byrd, twice by Degenerate Art Ensemble, Cornish Dance Theater, Moving Current (Tampa, FL), and Seattle Theatre Group in 2005 collaborating with Savion Glover, 2009 with locust, 2011 with AmyO/tinyrage, and 2012 collaborating with Daniel Bernard Roumain for “More Music at the Moore”.
Amy teaches Contemporary dance technique, improvisation, and choreography regularly at Velocity Dance Center, and with the Dance This program in Seattle. She has also taught her wildly popular Bottom Heavy Funk (Hip Hop/Club/Street based class) at Velocity for over a decade. She is the co-founder and lead teaching artist of Seattle Theater Group’s “Young Choreographer’s Lab” which merged with Velocity Dance Center to form the “Seattle Youth Dance Collective”. She has taught, conducted residencies, and been a guest speaker at the University of Washington, Cornish College of the Arts, Washington University (St. Louis), University of Idaho, Idaho State University, University of Montana, Texas Woman’s University, University of Oregon, Northwest Vista College (San Antonio), Conduit (Portland), Okinawa Prefectural Museum (Okinawa), and Dance New Amsterdam (NYC).
Amy has received funding from the Seattle Mayors Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, the international DanceWEB scholarship (2000), the Mary Levine Fund, Artist Trust (GAP and Fellowship) , 4 Culture, the Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, the National Dance Project, the National Performance Network, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Creative Capital Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art. Amy has been awarded creative residencies at Bates Dance Festival (07), Headlands Center for the Arts (08), the US/Japan Choreographers Exchange through Dance Theater Workshop. MASS MOCA, and the Japan Society (09), and was Velocity Dance Center Artist in Residence (2011). Amy was on the Stranger Genius Shortlist, over funded her latest solo work on USA Projects, and holds a BFA in dance from Cornish College of the Arts.
Artist profile from the Seattle Channel in 2007: