Jasmine Hearn, Memory Fleet: Stay in the Circle at KST

 

Jasmine Hearn, Memory Fleet: Stay in the Circle on April 24-25 A dance-theater tribute to Black mothers and mentors in a love letter to Pittsburgh. Featuring Jasmine Hearn, two nights of evening-length performance, a community dinner, and a movement workshop. Photo Credit: Jakayla Monay, Courtesy of the artist and DiverseWorks (Click photo to download) Dancer and choreographer Jasmine Hearn returns to Kelly Strayhorn Theater (KST) with their dance-theater performance Memory Fleet: Stay in the Circle on Friday & Saturday, April 24-25. Co-commissioned by KST, the work is a tribute to Black mothers and mentors and a love letter to Pittsburgh. Jasmine’s engagement with KST also includes a movement workshop Spectrum of Strength on Saturday, April 18, and a Citizens Community Dinner on Monday, April 20, both open to the public.   Memory Fleet: Stay in the Circle is a dynamic, dance-driven performance fueled by original music and poetry. Weaving together stories of labor and rest, it imagines the past, present, and future of Black people who mother and mentor. Rooted in Jasmine’s personal history and shaped by Black histories of Houston, Pittsburgh, and New York City, the performance unfolds through a series of embodied “recipes”—intimate yet expansive—that disrupt traditional ideas of dance and reveal how movement holds memory, story, and meaning.  Jasmine performs with Anqwenique Kinsel, Melike Vivastine Konur, Bekezela Mguni, Ursula Payne, Staycee Pearl, and Alisha B. Wormsley to form an interdisciplinary collective that retells shared memories and stories using dance and embodied sound. Named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” (2025), Jasmine Hearn has a rich history with KST, dating back over a decade. “Jasmine was the very first resident when we launched KST’s Freshworks program in 2013 – our robust creative residency for emerging artists and collaborators based in the greater Pittsburgh region that continues to this day, launches careers like Jasmine’s that shape the field. We’ve been honored to support Jasmine since then and witness their career take off,” says KST Co-Executive Director Joseph Hall, who founded Freshworks. Memory Fleet first premiered in Houston, TX, where the artist was born and raised. It now travels to Pittsburgh, where Jasmine graduated from Point Park University and landed their first professional dance contract with as a company member with Dance Alloy Theater, KST’s predecessor organization. Pittsburgh became the first place where they were connected with queer family while at local dance parties SAPPHO and volunteering with organizations such as New Voices PGH.  Next is New York City for the June production Memory Fleet: Beloved, Let’s Cross co-presented by New York Live Arts and the Chocolate Factory Theater. Jasmine reflects, “each place has a different way of celebrating the teachers who I have learned from and continue to be inspired by. This city of rivers has loved on me in a way I could not have imagined .” Memory Fleet: Stay in the Circle is part of the continually expanding, episodic, migrating project Memory Fleet led by Jasmine Hearn. Memory Fleet is a performance and archive project that preserves shared memories and stories, building on their earlier work Memory Keep(H)er, a dance solo created to preserve the oral narrative of Jasmine’s grandmother, which first developed in residency at KST in 2015. Photo Credit: Jay Warr  (Click photo to download) On Saturday, April 18, audience members can join the Spectrum of Strength workshop at KST’s Alloy Studios led by Jasmine Hearn to get a taste of the artist’s choreographic practice of identifying personal experiences that can be woven into collective dance “recipes”. The Citizens Community Dinner on Monday, April 20, welcomes guests to join Jasmine in a conversation about their life and the work trajectory of archiving matrilineal relationships across time and geography. Audience members enjoy a free buffet dinner with one complimentary drink ticket.  As audiences visit Kelly Strayhorn Theater during KST Presents performances, they can experience visual art exhibition, Practices of Holding, in the KST Gallery, featuring members of Sibyls Shrine, a national network, residency program, and collective of Black artists who m/other, of which Jasmine is a member. Curated by Jessica Gaynelle Moss, the exhibition honors ancestral and living matriarchs and is presented in conjunction with Memory Fleet: Stay in the Circle. Spectrum of Strength with Jasmine Hearn Saturday, April 18, 2026 | 12:00pm – 2:00pm KST’s Alloy Studios | 5530 Penn Ave. Tickets for Spectrum of Strength are Pay What Moves You, $10 – $25 per attendee, and can be reserved here. Citizens Community Dinner with Jasmine Hearn Monday, April 20, 2026 | 6:00pm – 8:00pm Kelly Strayhorn Theater | 5941 Penn Ave. Tickets for the Citizens Community Dinner are Pay What Moves You, $0 – $25 per attendee, and can be reserved here. Jasmine Hearn, Memory Fleet: Stay in the Circle Friday & Saturday, April 24* – 25, 2026 | 7:30pm – 8:30pm Kelly Strayhorn Theater | 5941 Penn Ave. *with post-show discussion Tickets for Memory Fleet: Stay in the Circle are Pay What Moves You, $20 – $35 per attendee, and can be reserved here. Sibyls Shrine: Practices of Holding, curated by Jessica Gaynelle Moss Wednesday, February 4 - Sunday, June 14, 2026 Kelly Strayhorn Theater | 5941 Penn Ave. Gallery Hours with Performance, learn more here. STYLE NOTES Spell Kelly Strayhorn Theater without a hyphen between “Kelly” and “Strayhorn”. Do not use “the” before Kelly Strayhorn Theater. ABOUT THE ARTIST Jasmine Hearn (They/Them), an interdisciplinary artist from occupied Akokisa lands (Houston, TX), is a performer, teacher, doula, and organizer. A 2025 Dance Magazine “25 to Watch,” Hearn has received awards including the Bessie Award and the FCA Grants to Artists. They’ve collaborated with artists like Solange and Bill T. Jones, and presented work at major venues including BAM and the Guggenheim. Their practice honors matrilineal memory, somatic traditions, and community through movement, sound, and design. ABOUT MEMORY FLEET Memory Fleet is a performance and archive project that preserves shared memories and stories. An expansion of Hearn’s past solo work, Memory Keep(H)er (2015), the multi-aspected project encompasses a series of performances, a shared embodied practice, an evolving installation of archival materials, an expanding digital archive, and original sound, text, and recipes. Together, these elements archive and celebrate the memories, dances, and gestures passed on through intergenerational lineages. CREDITS Memory Fleet is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development 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, NY) and NPN (New Orleans, LA). The work has received additional support from Creative Capital and the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation. ABOUT KELLY STRAYHORN THEATER Named after 20th century entertainment legends Gene Kelly and Billy Strayhorn, both natives of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Kelly Strayhorn Theater (KST) is a home for creative experimentation, community dialogue, and collective action rooted in the liberation of Black and queer people. We welcome our home to all who uplift Black, Indigenous, people of color, and queer voices. KST is an institutional arts anchor in Pittsburgh’s East End that has served the community for more than two decades. Since launching KST Presents programming in ’08, KST has been Black-led, fostering radical imagination for Black and queer arts, culture, and community in Pittsburgh by cultivating BIPOC and/or queer artists, entrepreneurs, and arts administrators, developing their careers, and shifting narratives around Black possibility.