Hattie Mae

Hattie Mae

HATTIE MAE WILLIAMS

 Bio

Hattie Mae Williams, is a compassionate activist who is reclaiming and reframing public spaces through sites specific work. A Miami native who received her B.F.A from The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater/Fordham University program and her Masters at Goddard University in Interdisciplinary Arts. In 2003 she established her Interdisciplinary dance company The Tattooed Ballerinas, forming roots in site specific dance. Hattie Mae has infused Film, Music, History, Installations, Literature and the practice of guerrilla style interventions in public spaces through her practice and repertory. Performing and touring in sites such as laundromats, supermarkets, cemeteries, parks, tennis courts, subways and art galleries Williams is pushing the boundaries of perception and community involvement in performance and process. Her work has traveled nationally and internationally to Holland, Italy, London, Los Angeles, New York, Kentucky and Miami. Williams is a recipient of the Knights Arts Challenge Grant 2013 which fully supported the site specific film “Culture Concrete,” a documentation of the historical 6,000 seat abandoned stadium in Miami, Florida, and also the Miami Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs Choreographers Dance Grant 2015.

Artist Statement:

I am a compassionate activist who is reclaiming and reframing spaces through Sites Specific dance, film, photography, and installations. I am the daughter of Florence Marie Berg (best known as Flossie) and Henry Lee Williams. I am the namesake of my beautiful, strong Grandmother who was born in Rochelle, Georgia where the cotton fields slow dance behind her house, the small juke joint buzzes with cousins, Bud Light, and one old pool table. My creative practice is the commitment to community and the use of art in a political and socially engaged way that connects community to place physically and strategically.

Reconnecting themes related to human conditions and feelings that are inherent and innate to all people is a constant web I try to navigate in; yet social, racial, cultural and economic divides along with institutional racist structures have acted to further remove us from these felt emotions and community connections. This disconnect has paralyzed the humanity muscle in many of us. My philosophy looks at Sites Specific work as a component of my work’s totality. The Mind is the politics and process that takes place in choreographing the interaction. The Body is the site and history of the place along with its current use. The Spirit is the community within the space along with the culture and energetic vibration that has lived in the site and will remain long after the work is resolved. I have an unshakeable contempt for the structures that house the artist’s messages, hopes, imaginations, and experimentations. I try to live within these structures as radically as I can with the hopes of manifesting change.