Born of two creatives in Ft. Worth Texas on March 31, 1989 Jehbreal Jackson was given the love for the arts before he took his first independent breath. His father is a visual artist, writer, filmmaker, and rapper, and his mother is a dancer, writer, producer and visual artist. His grandparents were also artistic with a grandmother who was a singer, another grandmother a florist, and a grandfather who was a musician who sang and danced with Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson on Broadway in the show Growin’ Pains. Jehbreal’s mother played Jazz and Classical music for him in the womb, and he believes that had it not been for him experiencing the joy of movement while dancing with her during the pregnancy that he would’ve become a composer. It seems that dancing with his mother before he could walk or talk established a prenatal connection to movement that marked him with the burning desire to tell stories through dance.

As a child on the LBGTQ spectrum he was often solitary and created elaborate stories with his toys; choreographing, acting, singing and composing music for them while living vicariously through the stories he created. He cycled through many artistic interests during this time beginning with acting. He was cast as an actor in various commercials including McDonald's and Radio Shack commercials among others. He studied screenwriting through an afterschool program with professional screenwriters in Los Angeles, California. Later, he created a comic book series of a superhero who was a young black woman in high school that he wrote and animated. He studied West African drum and dance forms from his step father of the time. Musically inclined, he studied Jazz music with his godmother (Saxophonist Rachella Parks-Washington), playing piano by ear, transcribing instrumental and scatt solos, and often performing as a singer as well though it wasn’t his desire to become a professional vocalist. He was often asked what he wanted to be as an adult, and because he hadn’t yet discovered his present-day integration of his interests, he resorted to saying that he wanted to be an entertainer like Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson. People would then reasonably suggest that he wanted to be a performer on Broadway, however that never sat well with him. The reason for this would not be clear until well into his adult years.

Upon seeing Savion Glover, the original Mickey Mouse Club, and his mother dancing around the living room between the ages of 5 and 9, Jehbreal’s focus became fixated on dance. Tap dance was his gateway drug. Jehbreal was 9 years old when his elementary school in the hood of Oak Cliff, Texas (located across the street from halfway houses and around the corner from drug houses), provided a wonderful after school arts program. This program brought students from Southern Methodist University to teach classes in all art forms. This was his chance to finally take the dance classes he had been dying to take for years. He wasn’t able to up to that point as his then divorced parents couldn’t afford them. These after school classes at the elementary school, however, were free. Jehbreal signed up for a tap class, only to discover upon entering the room that the class was no longer being offered, but was instead replaced by a ballet class. The teacher, Christie Sullivan, begged him to stay and try it out, and because she was so passionate about dance, and a woman of color that reminded him of his favorite pop artist at the time (Mya), he did. She became his first dance mentor, and his course at this point would be changed forever. He discovered Dance Theater of Harlem (DTH), the most influential and longest running classical ballet company at the time, which was comprised of a majority of black ballet dancers. This would become the first professional dance company that he would desire to be a member of (after initially wanting to dance for Missy Elliot).

Jehbreal went on to devote his life to the study of dance and the creation of art by attending L.A. Dance Collective (while living with his mom in Los Angeles, California), W.E. Greiner Middle School for the Arts (returning to live with his dad in Dallas), Dallas Black Dance Academy, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and The Juilliard School in New York for his undergraduate degree. While studying dance at Juilliard, Jehbreal was able to sing with a number of incredible musicians and composers including Jon Batiste, Kris Bowers, Chris Kapica and Samora Pinderhughes. Upon graduating Juilliard, he toured as a singer with Samora Pinderhughes’ Transformations Suite Band, made up of the jazz musicians at Juilliard, and became a member of Dance Theater of Harlem (DTH), which was the first professional company that he would dance full time for! Interestingly enough, though his childhood dream had come true, he had become jaded by the tradition and business of ballet. Jehbreal found that he wanted to dance the roles that were traditionally danced by women because, in his opinion, they generally had better choreography. He didn’t want to move like or look like the men in the ballets he was seeing. He had decided to become a contemporary dancer to move in a way that felt more natural to his instincts. Becoming a dancer at DTH, however, reminded him of his deep love for ballet. 

While at DTH, Jehbreal was fortunate to dance in roles that were created for him as well as longstanding masterpieces including George Balanchine’s Agon. After 3 years with the company Jehbreal’s frustrations with the traditions, choreography, and business of ballet, an increasingly contentious relationship with the staff at DTH, and frustrations with his own artistic identity lead to his termination from the company. After a few years of freelancing in New York City, Jehbreal left for Berlin, Germany with his lover at the time to find work as a dancer in hopes of an easier transition into a career in choreography. In this period of reflection he noted that he found a piece of himself in many art forms – as a singer, actor, visual artist and writer. However, none ever carried the sensation of complete fulfillment for him. Various artists were also deeply influential for him, but only a handful truly shaped him, and even fewer does he consider artistic mentors. William Forsythe’s movement vocabulary and interdisciplinary work from pieces like Quintett and Decreation encouraged him to merge all of his artistic interest into a single Gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork). George Balanchine introduced him to formalism through the expressive power of the rigorously composed body en pointe.  The first few moments of watching Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey beckoned him to a feeling of home that he hadn’t felt in art before.  This encounter would also present film as the container in which he would dump all of his seemingly disparate artistic passions and ideas into a singular vision. Johann Sebastian Bach was the first composer to floor him with nearly every work he’s ever created, using the intricacies of counterpoint, as not only a vehicle for working out artistic ideas, but, to Jehbreal, as a means to helping humans to reconcile with their souls. The most influential of them all on him, however, is William Shakespeare. Engaging with Shakespeare would prove to be the launching pad for developing his artistic voice. 

He began to read and research Shakespeare insatiably after watching Orson Welles’ film on Henry the IV and V, Chimes at Midnight. Though he believes that the marriage of Shakespeare’s text to stunning cinematic images (having at this point fallen in love with film) had much to do with his intense reaction to the Bard (as he had seen a number of Shakespeare’s plays at that time which all eluded him), it was the extraordinary cast’s delivery of the text that planted life changing seeds in his imagination and moved him to learn more. He began to read, re-read, and research Shakespeare for the artistic fuel and substance that he had been searching for all of his life. Like the home he felt while watching 2001, he saw a kinship between Shakespeare’s artistic world and a world that he was seeking to create with his work. He began to wonder how he could possibly create this world that he could begin to perceive within himself by using Shakespeare’s writing as a guide. 

These revelations coincided with a need for art to somehow remedy the traumas America was experiencing in the massacre of black Americans, police brutality and his personal traumas, with the nearly fatal abusive relationship with his husband. Upon leaving his husband he studied Shakespeare’s Sonnets and found that they gave voice to his traumas while also exorcising them. He needed to attempt to provide this kind of medicinal artistic experience through ballet for himself and for others. While in Germany, he found work with the ballet company Ballet am Rhein, and with the Salzburg Music Festival, but then had to leave Europe before he began either. He returned to Ft. Worth, Texas, with nothing. At this point he wondered what his next steps were, and if he were to leave dance altogether to begin a new path. He decided to try making small dance solos to use for a choreographic portfolio in hopes of taking one last stab at a career in dance and choreography. The initial idea was to have the solos professionally recorded as a record of his choreographic work. However, an interesting “coincidence” occurred. His mother remarried the summer before and was showing him the wedding video. While watching the video he took note of the skill of the videographer. He became overwhelmed with the serendipitous prospects of making a dance film with a person who he would discover had been wanting to make one as well for some time. The solo that would become his first short film, I Will Follow You Too, had the bare bones of the choreography, music, and thematic material already in place. Integrating the camera and filling out the story was as organic as if it were always supposed to be done in this way. It was during this time that the idea of the cinematic story ballet or “cineballet” was born. It would be a new subcategory of screen dance where the libretto of the full length (feature length) ballet would be created with an original story, physical choreography, and camera choreography in mind. He had found the vessel with which he would strive to learn from the artistic craft of William Shakespeare while creating a space in which healing could occur from his traumas; allowing others to heal by extension. It was, of course, an intimidating thought to him at first. However, once he began to encounter certain ideas from particular experts on Shakespeare, and seeing the need for a new form and new stories for ballets to inhabit, his far-fetched ambitions somehow seemed more attainable and urgent.

After returning home to Texas in January of 2016, Jehbreal began writing and choreographing CANON, his first cineballet. He used his life experiences, as well as those of his best friend and co-star Gabrielle Salvatto and his sister, as the basis for the narrative. After applying for grants without success, he applied for grad school at the University of California, Irvine at the suggestion of his mother. He was admitted for the fall of 2018. While there he shot CANON as he furthered his studies of dance and Shakespeare. He co-authored “Holy Palmer’s Kiss: Love, Trust and Wisdom in John Neumeier’s Romeo and Juliet Ballet” with his mentor, Shakespeare Scholar, Julia Reinhard-Lupton. He worked with her as a research assistant at the New Swan Shakespeare Center and their Shakespeare festival over the summer. He graduated in 2020 with a Master of Fine Arts degree in dance and a thesis that details his research on Shakespeare and how he applied his findings to his creative process titled “CANON, The Cinematic Story Ballet (Cineballet): & How I Learned to Create Cognitive Characters from William Shakespeare.” He Is now a PhD student at Columbia University in New York furthering his studies of choreography, cognition, and Shakespeare and the Moors.