Diverseworks Presents Memory Fleet: A Return To Matr
DIVERSEWORKS PRESENTS
MEMORY FLEET: A RETURN TO MATR
Jasmine Hearn
April 6 & 7, 2024
AT HOUSTON MET DANCE
Houston TX, March 7, 2024) DiverseWorks is pleased to announce the premiere of Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr, a performance, installation, and archive by Jasmine Hearn, on April 6 at 7 PM and April 7 at 2 PM at Houston Met Dance, 4916 Main St #100, Houston, TX 77002.
Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr is inspired by the shared memories and lived stories of the Aunties and Matriarchs who have shaped Hearn’s life. The project celebrates their influence and impact throughout the North and South side communities of Houston braiding together oral histories with practices of adornment and care through movement and dance.
Memory Fleet roots itself in a collage of embodied technologies and oral practices of migrating Black American people with methodologies that incorporate a multitude of dance forms like Jazz, Zydeco, and line dancing with iterative gestures that shape-shift with elements of adornment, sound design, and slow cooking.
This project will feature Hearn and an ensemble of performing artists from Houston including Ingrid Burley, Brittany Bass, Ariel Bounds, Dr. Lindsay Gary, Zuri Humphrey, and Sandra Organ Solis. The accompanying installation A Return to Matr was developed in conversation with Houston-based artists Lovie Olivia, the legendary garment designer Toni Whitaker, and New York-based artist Myssi Robinson.
Memory Fleet is created for the Black people and places that have mothered Hearn. The project began with Hearn’s return home and solo performance, MEMORY KEEP(H)ER (2016), made with their grandmother, Claudette Nickens Johnson, to build an alternative archive for her stories through a process that Hearn is developing called choreographies of care.
Hearn developed the Houston performance of Memory Fleet through a series of migratory movements along the bayou, listening sessions with Houston Aunties, and a series of residencies at DiverseWorks and Houston Met Dance. Hearn is further developing a memory-keeping practice that will then tour to Pittsburgh, PA, and New York, NY to archive the living memories of Hearn’s dance mothers within these communities.
DOWNLOAD HI-RES IMAGESFor more details, and questions about accessibility please visit the website or contact info@diverseworks.org.
MEMORY FLEET: A RETURN TO MATR
PERFORMANCES
Saturday, April 6 | 7 pm
Sunday, April 7 | 2 pm, followed by a talkback with the artist
Approximate run time: 1 hour, no intermission
Pay-what-you-wish. Suggested $25. Get Tickets
INSTALLATION WALK-THROUGH WITH LOVIE OLIVIA
Sunday, April 7 | 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
Free admission, no tickets required.
LOCATION
Houston Met Dance
4916 Main St #100, Houston, TX 77002
PARKING
The facility entrance and parking lot are located on Main Street. Parking is available and free in the parking lot and on the street.
Visit the DiverseWorks website for more information about Memory Fleet.
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: Outstanding Performance (2017, Skeleton Architecture) and Outstanding Performance and Outstanding Production (2021, 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.
SUPPORT
Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr is presented and produced by DiverseWorks in collaboration with Houston Met Dance.
Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr’s presentation in Houston is supported in part by an Arts Projects grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Hollyfield Foundation, and the Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts.
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, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Pittsburgh, PA, New York Live Arts, New York, New York. Memory Fleet was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.
DiverseWorks receives general operating and program support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, The Brown Foundation, Inc., The Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts, The George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation, FUSED (French U.S. Exchange in Dance), The Hollyfield Foundation, Houston Endowment, National Performance Network, Ruth Foundation for the Arts, Teiger Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Wortham Foundation, and DiverseWorks patrons and members.
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ABOUT HOUSTON MET DANCE
Houston Met Dance is a multi-functional dance organization that excels at instilling passion and excitement for dance in its students, training the talented youth of Houston, preparing them for careers in dance performance, and inspiring children through the art of dance. For the past 25 years, Houston Met Dance has been dedicated to enriching the communities of Houston and being a leader in diversity and vitality of arts presentation and instruction.
Houston Met Dance
4916 Main St #100
Houston, TX 77002
www.metdance.org
ABOUT DIVERSEWORKS
DiverseWorks produces and presents new multidisciplinary art through innovative collaborations with artists and communities. We honor each artist’s vision without limits to generate expansive art and learning experiences for all. Founded by artists in 1982, DiverseWorks is nationally known for its ground-breaking programming, as a resource for the innovative and meaningful engagement of communities, and as a force that has shaped contemporary thought and practice in Houston and the nation. DiverseWorks has a long history of supporting the creation of new work, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and as a bridge between diverse sectors of the art community.
DiverseWorks
3400 Main Street, Ste 292
Houston, TX 77002
www.diverseworks.org
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