Jasmine Hearn, born and raised on occupied lands of the Akokisa, Atapke, Deadose, and Karankawa peoples (Houston, TX), is an interdisciplinary artist, teacher, doula, dancer, performer, and organizer. Named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” (2025), Jasmine is 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 Creative Capital Award for their performance and archive project Memory Fleet (2022) and also awarded two NY Dance and Performance Bessie Awards for Outstanding Performer (2021, 2017* with the cast of skeleton architecture). 

Jasmine has been an artist in residence as part of the LiveFeed residency program at New York Live Arts (2023-2026), Summer Stages Dance at The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (2024), and at the African American Historical Research Center – a joint initiative supported by the Center of Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning at Rice University (2025). Their body of performance work has been presented at the Mattatoio x Spazio Griot, Ford Foundation, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Danspace Project, and the Hobby Center for Performing Arts with Urban Souls Dance Company.

They have collaborated with Bill T. Jones, Saul Williams, Solange Knowles, Alisha B. Wormsley, Okwui Okpokwasili, Marjani Forté-Saunders, Tsedaye Makonnen, Holly Bass, Bebe Miller, Jonathan Gonzáles, and with dance companies, Urban Bush Women and David Dorfman Dance presenting choreographic work at the Metropolitan Museum, BAM, New York Live Arts, Guggenheim Museum, Getty Center, Venice Biennale, and Carnegie Museum of Art.

Artist Note:

I make dances and build choreographies that remember and imagine memories, narratives, and stories. Since 2010, I have choreographed a body of work that sources unwritten codes, languages, and gestures— relying on improvisational practices taught to me by mothering folks, caregivers, and practitioners of Jazz dance, I am curious what songs and gestural sequences exist in the liminal space between these practiced technologies of labor visible and invisible. 

I start by listening to land, water, people, and place– conversations, interviews, and meals initiate each project. As a leading artist for multiple projects, all of my work is a collage of the lessons and stories that have been shared with me with consent. Instead of mining a place of its resource, my practice asks where am I invited to listen? And what wants to be shared, framed, and attended? 

My creative practice is moved by curiosity; who am I referencing? Can I name each person/place in a way that feels good to them? Can I remember or imagine the shape of their spine as gesture, as dance? How can I celebrate past contributions by mapping lineages? What stories and methodologies can my body remember and satellite as part of existing lineages of dance and archiving practices?

- Jasmine Hearn