A dark brown skin person with their head shaved look directly into the camera with dark brown eyes. They are in front of a hazy grey blue background.

Jasmine Hearn

Houston, TX

Jasmine Hearn is an interdisciplinary artist, director, performer, choreographer, organizer, doula, and teacher. They are committed to performance as an expansive practice that includes a spectrum of dance and somatic traditions and techniques, sound design, garment design, and the archiving of matrilineal memories. They give gratitude to Spirit, their mothers and aunties, and all the mothering Black people who have supported their moving, remembering body.

Hearn has performed their work at venues such as the Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Pittsburgh, PA (2021); New York Live Arts, New York, NY (2021); Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, Houston, TX (2021); Danspace Project, New York, NY (2019, 2017); and BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Bronx, NY (2016). They have also performed with the companies Helen Simoneau Danse, Urban Bush Women, and David Dorfman Dance, among others, and collaborated with many artists, including Holly Bass, Maria Bauman, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Gerard & Kelly, Vanessa German, Li Harris, Bill T. Jones, Solange Knowles, Ayanah Moor, Lovie Olivia, Staycee Pearl, Alesandra Seutin, and Alisha B. Wormsley.

Hearn is the recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2023), Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize in Design with collaborator Athena Kokoronis of Domestic Performance Agency (2023), New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards for Outstanding Performer (2021, 2017), a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2019), and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants (2022, 2017). They have been awarded residencies through Movement Research, New York, NY; Pittsburgh Foundation, Pittsburgh, PA; and the Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France.

Hearn, born and raised on occupied lands now known as Houston, TX, studied dance and sound with a multitude of teachers, including their sister, cousins, aunties, instructors, and friends at family events, church, and took classes at the Houston Metropolitan Dance Center. They have also been greatly influenced by teachers, mentors, and collaborators, including Byronné J Hearn, Claudette Nickens Johnson, Joy KMT, Barbara Mahler, Pamela Pietro, Kendra Portier, Samita Sinha, Sandra Organ Solis, jhon r. stronks, Sherie van den Wijngaard, Charmaine Warren, Marýa Wethers, Bennalldre Williams, Marlies Yearby, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Hearn received a B.A. from Point Park University.

Photo: Hayim Heron


Events

Memory Fleet


Jasmine Hearn is an interdisciplinary artist, director, choreographer, organizer, teaching artist, and a 2017 and 2021 Bessie awarded performer. Hearn’s commitment to dance is an expansive practice that includes performance, collaboration, and memory-keeping.

Artist Bio

Memory Fleet is a traveling performance and archive project that begins by remembering and celebrating the living memories of Black matriarchs of the North and South sides of Houston, TX. The process for Memory Fleet includes creating interdisciplinary performance recipes that braid together choreography, text, garment design, and sound design – each score is inspired by the lived stories of those that have mothered and mentored. Moving from Houston, TX to Pittsburgh, PA to New York, NY, each site will activate the same methodology while engaging the oral histories and living memories of key figures in each city.

Award Year
2022
Status

In Progress