Zoozaazii Theatre
Luciana Bocchino
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Luciana is an actress of Southern Italian heritage. She has worked in London on a variety of productions and has a musical background. Her interests include Surrealism, Absurdism and Theatre of Cruelty.
She was born in Tasmania and started performing at a young age singing at funerals, weddings and as part of Italian community festivities.
Her family moved to Victoria and the gypsy life entered her imagination. As a teenager Luci experienced the country side of the wild west of Victoria. She made a move for Ballarat, Adelaide and then to Sydney near The Stables Theatre. She worked and trained as a Fogg Girl for Ellis D Fogg.
In London she performed in Street Theatre troupes and travelled to the South of France and Paris performing, juggling, and competing with fire jugglers.
She has been involved in punk cabaret and various site- installation outfits playing bass guitar. She was also resident at Teatro Technis working on various in-house theatre productions and created Poetry in Motion which was launched at Teatro Technis for aspiring Poets, Writers, Dancers and Comedians.
She then started Le Donne, a project to create original work for women inspired by the Argentinian tango, as she approached the age of 50.
The vision was and still is the struggle between love and death and everything in-between. Work created, directed, and produced by women for women voicing their struggles and passions.
Catherine Mobley
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Catherine is of Indian heritage and has worked as an actress for over twenty years in London and South Australia. She has a strong interest and background in devised theatre, new writing, comedy, Middle Eastern and Indian Dance.
Her experience of devised theatre includes ensemble roles in The 1000 Eyes of Dr Mabuse (Mad Love Inc) which won the Adelaide Fringe Festival in 1994 and then in London, The Piranha Lounge (Lyric Hammersmith) and 147 (Oval House Theatre) with Dende Collective.
Catherine also has many years experience as a Drama Facilitator and Mentor with emphasis on using Devised/Organic theatre techniques to help young people shape their creative ideas.
She had always aspired to creating her own devised work from scratch as part of an ensemble so was particularly interested when she read the Le Donne Manifesto as proposed by Luci.
Dominique Wood
Dominique started professional dance training at Arts Educational School 1967-1974, and graduated 1977 , receiving a Diploma, Honours in Modern Dance.
Studies included
Classical Ballet, Contemporary Dance, Martha Graham Technique and Jazz Dance, Luigi Technique and she was a member of Dancers Anonymous contemporary dance company performing at Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
She studied Luigi technique with Molly Malloy and Arlene Philips and was inspired to become a Jazz dancer, this led to a successful career in Theatre , television and film and notably she became a member of Arlene Philips Hot Gossip in 1977 which shot to fame when televised for Thames Tv’s Kenny Everett Video Show.
Dominique danced in the film Monty Pythons Meaning of Life and worked for Flick Colby as a dancer in Zoo, for Top of the Pops , also performing in many promotional videos .
She really loved live performances dancing for the Tubes rock show at Knebworth Festival and performing on Jean Jaques Burnell’s Euroman cometh tour .
Sponooch Dance group offered the opportunity to work on choreography and broader aspects of visual imagery and collaborate with other artists and musicians along the way.
Whilst working in Sponooch dance group her choreography was televised for
The BBC’s Friday Night Saturday Morning series , The Riverside Series and the Sponooch Documentary” Dancing Girls “ and later she choreographed the opening to a Stranglers concert ,at Hammersmith Odeon, to Waltz in Black.
A life changing spinal injury led to a career as a Pilates teacher . Known then as Dominique Christou she helped rehabilitate many people suffering pain from injury. She worked at Trinity/ Laban Dance conservatoire for 10 years ,which included providing remedial exercise for dancers, having an interest in movement on a deep level she recently trained as a Gyrotonics and Gyrokinesis teacher travelling to the Ubud in Bali for final certification.
Never forgetting her love of choreography and performing she trained and performed Flamenco with Rosario Serrano . She has been involved in many art projects , using the arts with young people whilst working as a qualified part time youth worker and at the other end of the scale for Kimberly “Festival” devising and choreographing a show for “Hot Flush” a group of 30 wild women aged 50+ ,most had never performed before! She is choreographer for an experimental Film on Vimeo, Metamorphosis by Aidan McCarthy.
Now excited to be part of team ZooZaaZi
Hema Sibtain
London born Hema is of Indo/Pakistani & Irish heritage.
She graduated from Central Saint Martins with an art degree in 1994. During her degree and beyond, her visual work was inspired by the flamenco dance classes she did with various dance teachers in London and Spain. On completion of her degree, she continued her dance practice into contemporary dance, jazz and ballet classes at the Wornington Centre, Ladbroke Grove. This training was funded by the European Union of which she is eternally grateful. She subsequently did a two year drama course at City Lit. Her most recent role was Polina in The Seagull, in 2018 at Teatro Technis. Other roles were Prodo (Scenes From An Execution, Howard Barker), Poet (La Ronde), Olga (The Cherry Orchard). Hema helps lead dance workshops for a mental health charity, the Dragon Cafe, and helps run a south London community garden.
She has had a varied career as a performance and dance artist with Techno Burlesque Go Go Broadcasting (whose main home was at the Mellout Sundays at Subterranea (Ladbroke Grove), flamenco dancing at various venues such as the BBC (Los Topos, the 11th Hour), and in more recent years, she was a dancer with The Bandorians, a collaboration of dancers & musicians.
I am delighted to be part of the team in Zoozaazii.
Wendy Olver
Wendy specialises in effects, make up, styling, costume and headdress design and production, window dressing and display. Her work features in film, television, dance, opera, books and at premieres.