Date: 21.06.2023
Time: 8 PM
Location: Theatre 2, Foyer 2
Mattatoio, Rome
Drawing from a spectrum of memories, stories, and movement traditions, choreographer and performer Jasmine Hearn presents a non-linear conversation between two fictitious embodied characters, Loose Luc and Sal. These characters have continued to develop throughout Hearn’s travels from Texas to New York, and from Macedonia to Italy. The 35 minute dance-theater piece includes original sound and garment design made in collaboration with artists and community organisers.
Performance and Choreography: Jasmine Hearn
The movement is an improvised recipe of memories, stories, and conversations. I am listening to land coordinates and the architecture of the Mattatoio. I am listening and remembering who I have been able to connect with as my body moves through a nonlinear story / memory / fantasy of want and protection.
I am referencing the works of many including:
My grandmother
My mother
My sister
Urban Bush Women
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
Germaine Ingram
Staycee Pearl
Holly Bass
Tsedaye Mckennon
Paloma McGregor
Amara Tabor Smith
Blondell Cummings
Joan Miller
Bebe Miller
Marlies Yearby
Okwui Okpokwasili
Laurie Carlos
Zora Neale Hurston
Audre Lorde
June Jordan
Toni Whitaker
Marjani Forte Saunders
Sandra Organ Solis
Akasha Hull
Patricia Bell Hunt
Barbara Smith
And many many more.
Sound
Sound Design: Jasmine Hearn
Vocals: Jasmine Hearn
Additional vocals: Jo Stewart
Banjo and Vocals: Angie Pittman
Cover of "My Journey to the Sky" sung by Coline Creuzot
Garment
Plum dress given by Sandra Organ Solis, Houston, TX 2022
Black and white dress bought from Rome, Italy 2023
Jasmine Hearn
is an internationally-touring 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 composition, design, cooking, 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 Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize in Design with collaborator Athena Kokoronis of Domestic Performance Agency (2023), a Creative Capital Award (2022), 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.