Jasmine Hearn
Jasmine Hearn is an interdisciplinary artist, teacher, doula, performer, and organizer and was recently named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” (2025).
Biography
Hearn was born and raised on occupied Akokisa lands (Houston, TX). They are a recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (2023), a Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize in Design with Athena Kokoronis of DPA(2023), a Jerome Foundation Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2019), and two NY Dance and Performance Bessie Awards for Outstanding Performer (2021, 2017* with the cast of skeleton architecture).
Hearn has collaborated with Dream the Combine, Bill T. Jones, Saul Williams, Solange Knowles, Alisha B. Wormsley, Vanessa German, Okwui Okpokwasili, will rawls, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Tsedaye Makonnen, Holly Bass, Bebe Miller, and with dance companies, Sandra Organ Dance Company, Urban Bush Women, David Dorfman Dance, Staycee Pearl dance project, and Dance Alloy Theater presenting choreographic work at the Metropolitan Museum, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Live Arts, Guggenheim Museum, Getty Center, Venice Biennale, Ford Foundation, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Danspace Project, and the Hobby Center for Performing Arts.
Hearn is committed to performance as an expansive practice that includes a spectrum of dance and somatic traditions and methodologies, sound composition, garment design, and the archiving of matrilineal memories. They have been greatly influenced by teachers and mentors, including Begee, Bekezela Mguni, 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 gives gratitude to Spirit, their mothers and aunties, and all the mothering people who have supported their moving, remembering body.
Hearn is currently leading an archive and performance project, Memory Fleet, which has been awarded a Creative Capital Award (2022), a Creation Fund Award from National Performance Network (2022), and a National Dance Production Grant from New England Foundation of the Arts (2023). With its premiere Houston, TX as part of DiverseWorks Spring 2024 performance season, Memory Fleet continues to deepen and will be presented at Kelly Strayhorn Theater in April 2026 and New York Live Arts in June 2026.
Hearn is a visiting faculty in the BFA Dance Lab at Bennington for Fall 2025.
Photo credit: Kearra Amaya Gopee