James Busby, also known as Jahree Élan Vital, is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, and movement practitioner whose work explores the meeting place of ancestry, creativity, and embodied expression. His family roots lie in rural New South Wales — Narrabri and Wee Waa — through the Price and Badgery families on his mother’s side, and the Busby’s and Border’s on his father’s side.

Jahree honors the First Nations peoples of Australia, especially the Kamilaroi and Gamilaraay whose lands shaped his family’s life, and recognizes, like here in North America, that Indigenous sovereignty was never ceded. He holds in his heart the generations to come, committed to continuing the work of truth-telling, listening, and nurturing futures where Indigenous voices, lands, and laws are honored as living foundations of our shared humanity.

The name Jahree Élan Vital was given through dance ritual, marking a personal journey of separation from colonial histories and reconnection to the living world. Jahree means “moving toward the natural world,” while Élan Vital — a term coined by philosopher Henri Bergson — speaks of the vital impulse that drives creative self-organization and the flourishing of life. This name embodies his dedication to creative renewal, relational healing, and imagination as a living practice.

Jahree works across movement, sound, writing, visual arts, and storytelling, blending improvisation, ritual, and community collaboration. His performances and workshops invite people to inhabit creative states where ancestry and body memory can find new expression, where inherited histories can transform into living pathways of connection and resilience. He draws from music, somatic movement, contact improvisation, theater, painting, and narrative arts to create immersive experiences that foster belonging, curiosity, and collective creativity.

Rooted in humility and respect, Jahree’s vision is to build artistic spaces where people can listen deeply — to one another, to the land, and to the unseen currents that shape us — and in doing so, contribute to a future in which creativity acts as a bridge between cultures, generations, and worlds.