MudMothers: Origins




The Ghetto Shaman: That Which Lurks in the Shadows






& Creator
I work through dance and multidisciplinary collaboration to build immersive worlds that examine spiritual displacement and diasporic identity. As a child of the African diaspora, I inherit fragmented and obscured histories, and my artistic practice functions as a ritual of recall. My work seeks to recover and preserve histories, cultural memory, and ways of knowing erased or excluded from dominant understandings of Black American life. Centering radical embodiment, oral storytelling, and immersive scenic design, I translate arcane wisdom cultivated through my engagement with stewards of African and diasporic ancestral traditions.
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The cosmology of my work is rooted in Black mysticism and the expansive interiority of Blackness—its imagination, movement, memory, sound, and Spirit. Whether situated in ceremonial settings or performance spaces, my works invite audiences into intimate encounters with the resilience of Black lore and the ever-evolving breath of our stories. My movement language draws from North American contemporary dance, African diasporic and continental folkloric traditions, and immersive dance theater. I braid the emotional and physical rigor of contemporary form with the character development, storytelling, and world-building embedded within folkloric and immersive practices. I create performance environments that function as sites of remembrance, transformation, and collective witnessing.
They/He
Artist Statement
Performance Artist

Javon "Ja'Moon" Jones

Black American
Indigenous American
Mystic
Mystic
"Jah"
African Traditional Religious Initiate
Lover