Pays ronds: pyramid of dancers in front of a red backdrop.

Sarcelles · Linköping · since 2006

Mayemba
DanceCompany

Contemporary hip-hop dance company founded and directed by the choreographer Didier Mayemba. Six pieces in the repertoire, a method for passing dance on — mayembism — and battles that link France to the Nordic countries.

Explore the repertoire Book the company

Urban · African · Contemporary dance

2006Company founded

6Pieces in the repertoire

2Offices, in France and in Sweden

1994First hip-hop classes in Sarcelles

The project

Using culture as a means of integration

In 2006 Didier Mayemba founded his own professional contemporary hip-hop dance company, to which he gave his name. Paying the closest attention to the teaching of dance technique, he took charge of the development of several amateur training programmes: the company is made up of young dancers who came through them.

It upholds the values of popular education — the passing on of knowledge, integration, citizenship, secularism, access to education, to culture and to leisure — and works in the cultural, social, intergenerational and intercultural fields.

The company and its choreographer

Black-and-white portrait of the choreographer Didier Mayemba in a studio. — Didier Mayemba, author and choreographer

The repertoire

Six pieces, one gesture

From the floor-grounding of the break to the vibrations of pop, Didier Mayemba serves an elegant, natural movement, nourished in equal measure by contemporary dance and Afro-Cuban dance.

Stage bathed in blue light, several dancers on the floor, seen from the auditorium.

As an artist, I feel obliged to give a vision and the hope of a possible road for the future. Didier Mayemba

Choreographic workshop: a dancer facing a participant, in front of a seated audience.

Outreach

Mayembism

The mayembism method aspires to the well-being of the creative spirit. The secret of that well-being lies in a sincere expression of one’s voice, of one’s deepest self, authentic and proud of its reality. That sincerity is synonymous with freedom.

The teaching has two strands: learning the techniques of dance, but also the history and the spirit of the means of expression these young people have chosen to use. Didier Mayemba draws on the fundamentals of hip-hop — break, lock, poppin, new style — for beginners, and teaches the more advanced mayembism, his contemporary African technique.

Workshops, schools, international exchanges

Coming up