James Jimenez Creative Souls Featured Reel by Noemi Creative Souls
It is said that life is an illusion, yet no matter how we perceive it, life is felt deeply in any state or dimension. Creative Soul, James Jimenez, is an illusionist wizard transforming the way reality is interpreted, frolicking with rhythms and shapes to tell the story of life through movement and flow.
James, AKA Animated J, specializes in finger-tutting, freestyle, and different street dance styles. He’s the founder of Think Outside The Box, sharing helpful tips, interviewing creatives, and offering online classes, including consultation services on different ways of evolving creativity.
Whether it is a plant, a TV, a paper clip, or a laser beam, James believes that anything can be interpreted through movement. “How far can you push something to be an illusion? My perspective is movement. I don’t see myself as a dancer. I create the illusion beyond the movement,” explains James, who considers himself an experimental artist.
“If there were no humans around, I would still create with movement,” James shares that there is no difference between dance and not dance because everything is in constant motion. He lets his body narrate stories through conscious movements such as tutting. Tutting, as James explains, comes from the style of dance popping, which people were inspired from Egyptian-style movement, making squares with the hands, lining with the body. He took this technique as far as he could, bending, flexing, and stretching each one of his fingers, helping the ligaments evolve. Now it’s second nature for him – intertwining his hands and fingers, creating a mirage of the unseen space with his hypnotizing movements.
Born in Queens, New York, he moved to the ‘City of Brotherly Love’ during middle school. Dance has always been part of his Puerto Rican roots, and at family celebrations, dancing was a given and James was on the dance floor like uno, dos, tres. Growing up, his parents were video gamers and made it a time to bond as a family, a tradition that allowed James to tap into the world of visual arts and give his imagination more room to grow. He also did martial arts, and by 6th grade, he was very athletic and played football.
“It’s interesting how we get to where we are,” James shares the journey that led him to fall in love with creativity in general. He recalls getting fascinated with dance while watching people do DDR at an arcade, but beyond dancing at family parties, James had little interest in the art. But his younger brother was, and he was good at it, sparking, for the first time, James’s interest in dance. He started browsing dance videos online, compilating his favorite ones from all over the world: contortionism, Hip-Hop, and funk styles. James recorded a two-hour mix video and locked in his room, he would practice daily. Learning the moves. Assimilating the flow.
After James had mastered the dancer within, he went to the studio where his brother had taken classes to test the waters of performance. “Who? How? What?… Didn’t you used to be shy before and now you got these moves???” This was the reaction James received after he poured his newborn talents on the floor. From then on, the doors to the dance world were wide open and he walked right through them, dancing three-hour-long sessions, and getting into the dance scene in Philadelphia.
James and his brother started a dance group and competed around the city of Allentown. At their first competition at the local Fair, they won first place, prompting James to get into battle dancing. James was getting better and better, not only in technique and performance but in allowing the art to flow through him like a waterfall without constraints. He joined Facebook dance groups where he met more like-minded creatives, and he also started posting videos on YouTube.
While in Philly, his parents encouraged him to get a career, and James became interested in understanding human emotional state and behavior, earning a BA in Psychology. He currently works as a Counselor for children with autism.
“Take time to master yourself. If you know yourself, you will be more clear with your life and you will know what to do,” James’s motivating words come from his experience as a psychologist. He reflects on going through a period of self-realization when he needed to embrace his own world to better guide others with his practice. By embracing his love for dance, he united mental health with art.
On one occasion, one of his muses, a French professional dancer, was running a contest and James submitted his video and won. He got to meet his idol in person, being the catalyst for his creative purpose to be reshaped.
James eventually moved to Los Angeles CA, where he connected with a broader dance community and participated in different contests. He went on to host special events at his place every 2 months. James invites 22 creatives to his living room to discuss topics about creativity, exclusively curating the freedom within the creative arts.
One of his latest projects is World Dance Stories: Who are the more creative people in this place? Who is bending and expanding their limits to express their art soul?? James travels around the world collecting the stories of interesting dancers and creatives, empowering cultures and society and what makes them be part of what they do. His first stop was France in 2024, where he interviewed several creative souls, including Tawatha Camilla, Mila, Gerrit, and Mr. Robot to mention a few.
“Nurture creativity – bring all the arts – it’s refreshing when we unite everything,” James expresses, giving details on his extensive research about the power and source of creativity through time: “The Greeks – by the gods, the Renaissance – from the self, and the Western – it’s the brain/mind,” he explains. James affirms that he is going to be part of the Renaissance of creativity, coming together all at once, and he’s earnestly working to pursue this goal.
“Time has to be used wisely and work every day. You got to do it. Figure out how to find clarity within. Your art is going to represent you,“ James encourages us, adding that we have an unlimited potential for ideas and nothing is wasted when we create.
James Jimenez is a vessel moving freely like the wind, inspiring us to dare to be open to all directions and perspectives in life. With his animated flow, he’s reminding us that reality is an illusion dressed in creativity, ready for us to tell its story with our art.
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“Make stories with movement. The key to all of it is not forgetting to play because playing keeps it fresh.” – Animated J