Publications
As a scholar, Jehbreal combines the study of ballet, Shakespeare, music, and race in their early modern contexts to analyze their compositional and cosmological connection to present day art making. He uses his findings as source material for his own artistic creations.
His most recent research focuses on the compositional and cosmological influences of al-Andalus and Bukôngo on his interests listed above, specifically the Afro-Islamic roots of classical ballet.
Written Publications
CANON The Cinematic Story Ballet (Cineballet) & How I Learned to Create Cognitive Characters from William Shakespeare
Jehbreal’s early research is documented in his MFA thesis CANON The Cinematic Story Ballet (Cineballet): & How I Learned to Create Cognitive Characters from William Shakespeare. Along with his research of Shakespeare and cognition, Jehbreal talks about how he made CANON as a result of his findings.
Holy Palmer’s Kiss: Love, Trust, and Wisdom in John Neumeier’s Romeo & Juliet Ballet
In “Holy Palmer’s Kiss: Love, Trust, and Wisdom in John Neumeier’s Romeo & Juliet Ballet” Jehbreal and his mentor Julia Reinhard Lupton look at the work of choreographer, John Neumeier. They compare his adaptation with the play and with other productions of the famed story of the star crossed lovers in a collection titled “Romeo and Juliet, Adaptation, and the Arts: ‘Cut Him Out in Little Stars.’ ”
Coming Soon
"Ballet Pedagogy and a “Hard Re-Set”: Perspectives on Equitable and Inclusive Teaching Practices"- In collaboration with Kate Mattingly, Keesha Beckford, Zena Bibler, Paige Cunningham, and Iyun Ashani Harrison
"In her scholarship on pedagogy, Gloria Ladson-Billings describes COVID-19 as a call to re-set education using a more culturally relevant pedagogy. As ballet teachers and researchers working in higher education and pre-professional settings, we teach a form of dance often associated with the characteristics of white supremacy. Through this collaborative institutional ethnography, we generated methods for posing questions, critiquing choices, and imagining alternatives to create more equitable educational settings. We connect the
process of addressing and challenging systemic exclusions in ballet with tangible steps toward creating more inclusive classes and performances that value the joy and pleasure in moving."
'Ballet as Artistic, Scientific, and Existential Inquiry', was created for the Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet’s (MOBBALLET) Cultural Competence and Equity Coalition (C²EC) curriculum. “C²EC is a membership-based organization that supports the embodiment of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-Racism and Cultural Competence (I.D.E.A.&CC) and works to transform the cultural norms within the classical arts and beyond. C²EC is a learning community providing the support, education, and advocacy organizations, leaders, artists, educators, and creators need to reimagine and reshape the culture and the standards of their fields.” To learn more about the program, enrollment, or to just learn more about the pervasive yet unsung presence and contributions of Afro-diasporic people in ballet please visit: https://mobballet.org.
For more specific information about the pervasive Islamic contributions to ballet and European art see the video below.
Dancer’s Amplified Presents- Ballet’s Black History
On February 26, 2022, Dancers Amplified launched a new series of interactive discussions; Dancers Amplified Presents, which feature artists who connect their art form and lived experiences through scholarship and research. These events will provide a space to amplify what an artist is today, bringing in the whole dancer beyond their brilliantly capable bodies. For the first event, DA team member, Jehbreal Muhammad Jackson, guided us through Ballet’s Black History. In this discussion we interrogated what we know of ballet's history by exploring how the courts of Louis XIII and XIV absorbed the Sarabande from the Spanish theater's Zarabanda, and how the Spanish theater absorbed the Zarabanda from the Moors of al-Andalus.
To posit an Andalusian source for the geometric base and formal preoccupations of ballet technique, we explored the various artistic manifestations and cultural cosmologies of al- Andalus whose synthesis of art, science, philosophy and religion explored concepts of an atomically interconnected universe through geometries and fractalized subdivisions.
The mathematically atomic world view is often attributed to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, however it is often overlooked that Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Plato (among others) attribute their learning to having studied in Kemet (ancient Egypt). Therefore, we traced the practices of al-Andalus that share a lineage through India, Syria, and Persia to the Shabaka Stone of ancient Kush (25th Dynasty), created in 710 BCE, which contains the seeds of atomism and the other aforementioned traditions in one artistic, scientific, and theological object.
Shakespeare and Black Life: Actor Jeremie Harris in Conversation with Jehbreal Muhammad Jackson
Recorded April 22, 2021
In this public conversation, Jeremie Harris discusses his role as Claudio in New York Public Theatre’s 2019 production of Much Ado About Nothing, which featured an all-Black cast and was set in Atlanta during Stacy Abrams’ campaign for governor of Georgia.