An interdisciplinary performance created by a Black queer ensemble, JUMBIE is a ritual for our sickened times.
Rooted in the history and culture of Montserrat, the Jumbie dance calls on the spirits of the dead to cure illness, solve personal problems, and redress social injustice. A night of feasting and music in which anything might happen – suppressed and silenced by colonial forces and the Christian Church. JUMBIE revives the traditional dance but from a contemporary queer perspective, and raises a middle finger to the Church and colonialism by simply existing. Led by provocative and playful artist Jamal Gerald and an ensemble who invite you to a night of sensual revelry.
Part ritual, part sex club, part dance party – and fully WTF.
“Jamal Gerald is, intensely, fiercely himself on stage” — Exeunt
“Jamal Gerald is on track to becoming one of Live Art’s premier provocateurs … [he is]an artist who seeks not just to inform or change minds, but to challenge the very ways in which our minds are made up” – Season Butler
About Jamal
Jamal Gerald is an artist based in Leeds, UK. His work is conversational, unapologetic and provocative with a social message. He makes work that he wants to see, intending to take up space as a Black queer person.
He has made work for poetry slams, films, parties, cafes and theatres. In 2018, he was awarded Arts Council England’s Artists’ International Development Fund to do research in Trinidad and Tobago. He was commissioned by Transform and Theatre in the Mill to make Idol, which premiered at Transform 19. Jamal’s work has also been shown at Kampnagel (Hamburg), SPILL Festival of Performance, Leeds Playhouse, Battersea Arts Centre and the Barbican.
Jamal is a Recipient of a Jerwood Arts’ Live Work Fund Award in 2021.
About Dudaan
Dudaan; pronounced dudarn (a Montserratian term which means – fresh, sweet, lovely place), is a Black queer enterprise. Alongside producing the work of its founder and director, Jamal Gerald, it creates and supports work by other Black queer artists in and around the north. JUMBIE is its inaugural production.