MEMORY FLEET: A RETURN TO MATR
Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr is a migrating performance and archive that preserves the living memories of eight Black matriarchs of the North and South sides of Houston, TX. Their shared stories will be the source for original sound scores, choreographies, and garments that will be experienced as a site-specific performance, album, feast, online archive, anthological catalog, and a mercurial system of somatic, embodied sound and dance practice.
The project is set to premiere in Houston in April 2024. Hearn is currently developing a memory-keeping practice that will tour to Pittsburgh, PA, Washington DC, and New York, NY as a way to archive the living memories of their dance mothers within their communities.
Memory Fleet is created for the people and places that have mothered Jasmine. It is for all Black people who mother. The project begins with Hearn’s return home and a solo, MEMORY KEEP(H)ER, made with their grandmother, Claudette Nickens Johnson as a way to build an alternative archive for her stories since she was beginning to lose her ability to remember.
For direct inquiries to the artist about the project please email [email protected]. For press inquiries please email [email protected].
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jasmine Hearn – They/Them was born and raised on occupied lands now known as Houston, TX. They studied dance with a multitude of teachers including their sister, cousins, aunties, teachers, and friends at family events, church, and at the Houston Metropolitan Dance Center Jasmine is an internationally touring interdisciplinary artist, director, choreographer, organizer, doula, performer, director, and a Rome Prize Fellow with Athena Kokoronis at the American Academy in Rome. Jasmine has also been awarded three Bessie Awards for Outstanding Performance (2017) with skeleton architecture, Outstanding Performance (2021), and Outstanding Production (2021) with the cast and crew of The Motherboard Suite.
Jasmine has creatively collaborated with artists, Solange Knowles, Alisha B. Wormsley, Vanessa German, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Maria Bauman, Lovie Olivia, Ayanah Moor, Staycee Pearl, Holly Bass, Li Harris, and companies, Urban Bush Women, David Dorfman Dance, and Helen Simoneau Danse, which have produced solo and collective dance choreography for performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Live Arts, the Guggenheim Museum, the Getty Center, the 2019 Venice Biennale, the Ford Foundation, Danspace Project, BAAD!, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, and other internationally acclaimed art spaces such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Their commitment to performance is an expansive practice that includes dance, embodied sound, garment design, painting, and the archiving of matrilineal memory. Jasmine gives gratitude to Spirit, their mothers, and all the mothering Black people, who have supported their dreaming dancing moving remembering body.
Website: https://www.jasminehearn.com
Instagram: @jasminehearncollaborates
Instagram: @memory_fleet
SUPPORT
Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr is a 2022 Creative Capital and 2022 National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by DiverseWorks in partnership with Chocolate Factory Theater, Queens, NY, Dance Place, Washington, DC, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Pittsburgh, PA, New York Live Arts, New York, New York.