BIOGRAPHY
Daniel Alexander Jones
Daniel Alexander Jones’s critically-acclaimed performance pieces include Black Light (Public Theater, Greenwich House Theater); Duat (Soho Rep); An Integrator’s Manual (La MaMa and Fusebox Festival); and Radiate (Soho Rep and National Tour). Jones has recorded five albums of original songs as his alter-ego Jomama Jones. He is recognized as a key voice in the development of Theatrical Jazz and has made a significant contribution to Black Experimental Theatre and Performance. Jones creates his own distinctive dramaturgy. His roots reach deep into Black American and Queer Performance traditions, and his work explores ideas of the Afromystical (awakening awareness of the numinous in the everyday through ritualized performance). Over more than two decades of professional practice, Jones has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to civic healing through vulnerable presence, truth telling, and collective critical engagement. Jones first appeared as his performance alter ego Jomama Jones in 1995; since her “comeback” in 2010, Jomama has released four albums, Lone Star, Radiate, Six Ways Home, and, in 2017, the double album Flowering. Jomama premiered Radiate to rave reviews and sold-out houses at Soho Rep in 2010 and the piece subsequently toured to cities including Los Angeles, Austin, Minneapolis, and Boston’s The Theater Offensive. Jones received a 2015 Doris Duke Artist Award in recognition of his risk-taking practice and a 2016 USA Artist Fellow. He was also named an inaugural Mellon Foundation Creative Research Fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle for 2017-2019. He is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Fordham University in NYC, where he lives. Jones is currently at work on Waves, a book fusing memoir, philosophy, and performance theory, detailing experiences with his vanguard artistic mentors including Robbie McCauley, Laurie Carlos, Rebecca Rice, Blanche Foreman, and Aishah Rahman.