“...she impressed me not only for the high quality of her performances, but also for her intelligence, seriousness, enthusiasm and knowledge of her art. Tehani is one of those rare performers who is simultaneously an excellent dancer and a scholar. Her commitment is such, that she has lived and studied in the places where her dances originated... As if all this weren’t enough, Ms. Sarreal writes very well... I endorse her strongly and without reservations.”
Adventures in Writing
Performing autoethnography alongside fellow CNF writer performances at the Miles Playhouse, Santa Monica (2015) .
Current Projects
Always working on new writing here! We will post onto the news page and to our newsletter as new writing is put out into the world. Since completing work at Oregon State University on phenomenological dance annotation and multidirectional ethnography (accessible through Google Scholar and the Scholars Archive at OSU), there’s been much progress on a comparative world dance autoethnography, based on source origin training around the world and the path back “home.”
Academic Writing Available on Scholars Archive & Google Scholar
Falling Inward: Ecstatic Dance & Recording the Ephemeral (2022) is Jennifer Tehani Sarreal’s 171-page Applied Anthropology Master’s thesis on Ecstatic Dance, the phenomenology of trance and Ethnographic Dance Annotation. Her creation of Ethnographic Dance Annotation is a contribution to the field of ethnography and ethnographic methods in visual ethnographic embodied phenomenological systems. It challenges the ways in which the body in motion is currently recorded and represented by anthropologists and dance scholars in accessible text form.
Newspapers & Magazines
Tehani has written for magazines and newspapers both as a contributing writer and guest columnist. The majority of her work has been published on the subjects of artivism (art and activism), comparative sacred world dance and (sometimes, with permission from the editor) about Miss Bella Rene. Connect with us directly for copies of articles and/or resources on this work. New articles published will be posted in the News section of this website and also sent out through the newsletter. Publishing highlights are posted in the About section of this website under the Resume button.
Editorial Work
In addition to writing, Sarreal has done academic copyediting for a medical anthropology refereed journal while participating as a collaborator in the UpLift Lab at Oregon State University.
SaRREAL VISIONS
SaRREAL VISIONS: Reflections & Journeys is a passion project and labor of love. What began as a book collaboration between a photographer father and dancer daughter culminated into a loving tribute to Tehani's late father. Thank you for supporting independent authors. The book has been taken off of Amazon as of 2019 and is available as an e-book PDF directly from this website on the Shop page. The second edition of this book will be released on its 15 year anniversary via Kindle in 2025.