Photo by Javier Alejandro Cerrada
Jax Neal is a multidiciplinary poet, choreographer, and performance artist currently based in Los Angeles, California.
Born in Houston, Texas Neal grew up writing and performing with the internationally acclaimed poetry slam collective, Meta-Four Houston.
Neal is a YoungArts Winner in Spoken Word, and in 2019 Neal was selected by the Library of Congress as one of five regional National Youth Poet Laureate Ambassadors, a position previously held by Amanda Gorman.
Neal attend the University of Wisconsin - Madison as a First Wave Scholar, the only full tuition scholarship for Hip Hop and Spoken Word Artists in the world. Under the mentorship of Chris Walker, Professor of Dance and senior choreographer of the National Dance Theater of Jamaica, Neal began his dance practice at the age of twenty-one in tandem with his creative writing studies.
Neal trained across the United States, Germany, and Brazil studying movement techniques including Capoeira, Wushu, Taekwondo, House, physical theater, and various global folk dance traditions. Later Neal also participated in the "Cleaning the House" workshop series hosted by the Marina Abramović Institute in Athens, Greece.
In 2023, Neal created ALTARCATION I, an original performance in which he runs on a commercial grade treadmill while speaking to his own mother who joins him on stage. The work debuted at the sixteenth annual Line Breaks Hip Hop Theater festival, and was described by artist Faisal Abdu'Allah as a "thoughtful, intense, riveting performance"
Jax now creates hybrid Gesamtkunstwerk, incorporating performance art, physical theater, poetry, and dance, often combining vulnerable storytelling with highly physical tests of endurance.
His first solo exhibition will debut in Houston, Texas (2025)