Opening Reception for Platform: Sharmistha Ray

About

Join the Moody and the artist Sharmistha Ray to celebrate the opening of their new work for the Platform series, sited at the east entrance of Fondren Library. This free and public event will feature a performance by New York-based dancer Jasmine Hearn and vocalist jhon r. stronks. Comments from the artists and reception to follow. This performance is made possible through the generous support of Rice University's Department of Religion, Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Department of Art History, and Fondren Library. About the performing artists. Director and Lead Artist: 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 two NY Dance and Performance Bessie Awards for Outstanding Performer (2021, 2017* with the cast of skeleton architecture). Residencies include LiveFeed at New York Live Arts, Summer Stages Dance at The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, and at the African American Historical Research Center, a joint initiative supported by the Center of Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning at Rice University. 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. 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 Gonzales, 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. Collaborator and Vocalist: Natasha Manley is a classically trained soprano and singer-songwriter with a Master's in Music from the New England Conservatory. Locally, she is a sought-after collaborator, known for creating original vocal scores, songs, and voice-overs for movement-based works. In October 2024, she premiered a new composition with Group Acorde dance company, a piece for voice and double bass that explores the boundaries of sound and breath through both composed and improvised music. She is thrilled to be collaborating with Jasmine Hearn on this performance and to share space with beautiful artists. Collaborator and Vocalist: jhon r. stronks is a queer identifying gender non conforming singer and dancer marking 20 years of service and creative participation in the Houston dance and performance community. Often their dancing is a mending practice in pursuit of expansion and evolution, while their singing carries through a mourning call in search of recognition, and reconciliation. Through their voice and movement emerges a genderqueer expression that remembers lost existences and imagines new trajectories toward the home and rest they are chasing after.