ENGLISH | Don't Hit Mama

Don't hit mama in a nutshell

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Don’t Hit Mama creates dance theatre work with professional, semi-professional and amateur dancers, based on Afro-American dance and music principles. The work of Don’ t Hit Mama is inspired by the uninhibited and capricious life styles one find in the big city. The art products of DHM centre around dance, celebration and self-awareness. Driven by its research, the path of the artistic core winds back to vital sources of dance in the United States, Africa and Asia.

HipHop Theater Festival New York 2010, foto: Bartel Meyburg

We first heard of the expression ‘don’t hit mama’ from our South African colleague, dancer and choreographer Moeketsi Koena. He used it when his dancers were being rude in their floorwork. To us it means respect for the source, being the ground on which you dance as well as the foundation on which you base your work. Koena got the expression from dancer and choreographer David Zambrano (Venezuela), inventor of the ‘art of flying low’.

Asian Celebration

Missie

Don’t Hit Mama (DHM) is het dansgezelschap van theatermaker Nita Liem en schrijver en dramaturg Bart Deuss, opgericht in 2000. Ze baseren hun danstheaterwerk op hiphop, de Afro-Amerikaanse danstradities, migranten thema’s en sociale dansvormen, die de basis vormen voor vele urbane dansstijlen.

Liem: “Vanuit Amsterdam gaan we verbindingen aan met spelers en makers uit binnen- en buitenland. Onze weg terug naar de bron voert naar Amerika, Afrika en Azië.”