Nita Liem receives Dansspeld

The Dance Pin originates from the Dance Museum (Dutch Dance Days) and is a token of merit. It is an award for people who have passed on knowledge, wisdom and experience within the Dutch dance field for decades. A symbol of continuity and cultural memory, pinned on at a current moment and thus anchored for future generations. Ronald Wintjens director Nederlandse Dansdagen: "With this, we celebrate and honour the valuable significance a person has within the Dutch dance heritage.''  

Nita Liem receives this award as a token of her merit within the dance landscape and especially for her role as a pioneer within the development that hip-hop dance made from the streets to the theatre in the Netherlands. Nita is seen within hip-hop theatre dance as mama Nita, as the mothership, as the source. She stands on the shoulders of others who preceded her but her step, exactly 25 years ago, to take hip-hop from the streets to the theatre in the Netherlands is referred to within the hip-hop theatre dance community as an important and guiding moment. For decades, her work often unseen brought forth many talents who are now shaping the current Dutch dance landscape. What started as a sense of need 25 years ago to give Hiphop a theatre stage later turned out to have made an indelible and essential contribution to one of the most promising movements in current Dutch contemporary dance. 

In the ND podcast 'From Street to Stage | 25 years of Hiphop theatre dance in the Netherlands', presenter Charissa Promes talks to the founding fathers of Hiphop theatre dance in the Netherlands, listen here to the episode with Nita Liem.

Images by: Janita Sassen