“Mockumentary’s choreography made us laugh, shake in our seat and bob our heads, gasp openly, and drop our jaw in amazement. O’Neal’s use of carefully defined space, gestural repetition, dramatic timing, and exquisite partnering created mesmerizing, powerful images that continue to replay in our head.”
mockumentary is a seamless blending of dance, video, and live music through lots of sweaty dancing, zombies, BMX bikes, and genre bending cinema. mockumentary begins as a fake documentary about a fake dance company whose militant choreographer turns out to be a zombie master, cursing the dancers and bringing forth zombies to kill them and turn them to the living dead. The audience follows the story as it unfolds simultaneously on screen and on stage and culminates in a zombie dance off with one surviving company dancer, ready for whatever is to come. This experience is part mockumentary, part horror film, part avante dance performance, part hip hop video, and part rock show.
Premiere: Oct. 2006, On the Boards Seattle WA
Tour: Fall 2007- University of Montana, Missoula MT, SUSHI San Diego, CA, and Bates Dance Festival Lewiston, ME
Concept and direction: Zeke Keeble and Amy O’Neal
Performers: Amy O’Neal, Zeke Keeble, Ellie Sandstrom, Amy Clem, Benjamin Maestas, Jessie Smith, Jurg Koch (premiere), and Mathew Smith (premiere)
Choreography: Amy O’Neal
Music: Zeke Keeble
Video: Amy O’Neal, Zeke Keeble, and Gabriel Baron
Video Programming and Live Feed Manipulator: Davey Oil
Lighting Design: Ben Zamora
Fashion Design: Macks Leger
mockumentary is funded by Creative Capital (creative-captial.org), NPN, 4 Culture, and Artist Trust.
Below is a small portion of the video that is projected during the show…
Press for mockumentary
“While zombies are used metaphorically and realistically within the many narrative themes woven throughout Mockumentary–including the line between horror and comedy, fear of losing control of one’s own body, and the desire to be accepted and loved even when you are very different from everyone else–one truism was predomoniantly clear: if you fail to comprehend that hip-hop and funk can and should co-exist with traditional modern dance onstage, you are rapidly becoming a zombie of the dance world.” – Seattlest
“Confident stances, whipsaw turns, cosmic bewilderment, and the living dead are all miraculously woven together with loose chords, tight beats, and many laughs.” – Jim Demetre, ArtDish Forum
“we were mesmerized by what Keeble could create with only two hands and feet.” – Seattlest
“As the zombies multiply, the first half weaves the creepy, comical zombie video storyline expertly with Keeble’s masterful live-beat looping and mixing, and locust’s dynamic, powerful dancing into a cliffhanger crescendo.” – Seattlest
“The intimate, comfortable, hanging-with-friends aura this created was translated directly into Amy O’Neal’s choreography for mockumentary, which was simultaneously languid and fierce, meshing traditional modern dance with hip-hop, funk, and, well, zombie moves.” – Seattlest
Seattle PI Review: 21 October 2006
locust stage swarms with energy: a multimedia feast for the senses
There are many reasons to see “mockumentary,” the latest offering by Seattle’s talented performance troupe locust.
There’s a wacky video mini-documentary about a “choreographer” who directs his dancers with meaningless phrases like “more weird.” There’s a zombie love story that culminates in a wild disco dance-off. There’s a biker confrontation in an alley that pits the bikes, not the cyclists, against each other. And there’s a riveting film segment of a woman in a flowing patchwork coat walking backward down a steep outdoor staircase.
But the most compelling aspect of “mockumentary” is the skillful way in which choreographer Amy O’Neal and composer Zeke Keeble seamlessly integrate live dance, live music, pre-recorded music and video vignettes into a multimedia feast for the senses.
Although multimedia shows are nothing new, O’Neal and Keeble have an uncanny instinct for creating sequences that enhance rather than distract from each other and for maintaining a cohesiveness that continues to move “mockumentary” forward.
Sometimes the action in the video segments is self-contained, as in a hilarious scene where the male zombie visits his local coffeehouse, much to the shock of other patrons. Sometimes the video drives the live action, with the dancers mimicking what is happening on tape. Sometimes the video screens are dark, with the focus exclusively on the seven powerful dancers.
Regardless of how much or little is happening onstage, the almost two-hour “mockumentary” holds our attention throughout as we wait for the next striking image or flashing body or driving rhythm.
O’Neal and Keeble are true collaborators, with each contributing to both music and movement. The rich score provides the bedrock on which the inventive choreography rests and it is impossible to imagine one without the other. The intense contractions of the funk-inflected steps are perfectly matched to the pulsations of the hard-edged music and the work is at its best when the focus is on pure ensemble dancing. – Alice Kaderlan