It is the turn of the young. From clandestine house parties, impromptu street battles, neon dancefloors and online streams, from Johannesburg, Miami and Rio, they're coming on the scene. DUB is a dance cocktail of youth that generously floods the theatre hall with the bright notes of the underground, nightlife and social media. These are moves you may have seen or even tried yourself.

French choreographer Amala Dianor brings together 11 skilled performers who specialize in urban dance, including electro, voguing, waacking, krump, afro, hip-hop and dub, the Jamaican variation of reggae with electronic bass and drums. With live music by DJ Awir Leon and a set design resembling a three-story facade and a contemporary building, the result is a pulsating salute to creative energy and the collective making of something new, daring and compelling with the power of an internet sensation - the dance forms of today.

DUB is more than a dizzying display of skills and techniques, a live concert and an adrenaline experience for the spectator. The show tells about the process of coming together and improvising as new urban dances take shape from one dancer to another, from group to group, from Paris to Seoul. The choreography starts from the avalanching in popularity dub music, but then Amala Dianor alters, twists and hijacks the movements to create an evocative piece and an original dance language. The music also transforms from acoustic reggae to deep bass, electronic beats, electrifying new tonalities. This double distortion of movements and music in real time follows the rule that the new steps on the old, and the only difference is the emotional magnitude - and the speed of the internet community.

Visual artist Grégoire Korganow's complex scenography uses seven large cubes arranged on three levels like a pyramid. The idea sprang from individual dancers or small groups who invented new movements in apartments, squares and streets, and then shared them online. And so these fragments of dances, watched live or on social media, become a connecting link. The wall of cubes is reminiscent of a skyscraper, the sound system in a nightclub, and the interface of Instagram. In each of these "boxes," like a chrysalis, the unpolished core of the movements will become a complete choreography with the enthusiasm of Generation Z and the nightlife aesthetic of Seoul, Paris, Los Angeles, and Atlanta.

DUB will bring up a number of important questions. What are we willing to give up to exist inside a group? What happens if we try to move together while staying true to our individual selves? Using this transposition of reality into digital as well as stage spaces, Amala Dianor is interested in exploring how these practices fit into contemporary dance history, extracting the essence of a new vision of the world, constructing an incarnate visual utopia, free of artifice, and especially based on this group of young, talented dancers

“...The young dancers have developed a vocabulary which is rooted in the choreographic references of my generation, offering them an expanse of new dimensions, new areas. Then I modify the choreography to connect it from within. I will invite the dancers to change their practices, scattering and diffusing parts of their technique so that they may open new collective creative spaces for themselves, more active, more luminous, infinitely more free.”

- Amala Dianor

„The spatial design was conceived using materials generally available in urban spaces (notably cinder blocks, sheet metal, raw concrete) which are delicately adapted, provisorily appropriated. We wanted to recreate the feeling of these spaces in which physical revolution might be possible, where transgression can become creation, where an inherent instability can transform into a primordial impulse. Working with this vertical edifice channeling the roughness of reality and the transgressive qualities of fiction, Amala Dianor will create a collective work which will free these beings from their compartmentalization and any spatial obstructions.”

- Grégoire Korganow

“A dazzlingly energetic ensemble” - Belinda Mathieu, Scèneweb

“Amala Dianor’s skilful construction of this relaxed celebration (...) makes for a show that’s as delightful as it is catchy.” - Delphine Baffour, La Terrasse

“From Johannesburg, Seoul, Miami and Rio, 11 virtuosos from the new generation of street dancers come together in DUB, a rousing creation by the Franco-Senegalese choreographer. It is undoubtedly the first great merit of DUB (...) to show in more institutional venues the inventiveness of a new generation of urban dancers, virtuosos in the art of hijacking different street dances and seasoning them with local sauce. From the very first minutes, DUB manages to create a common thread while preserving the identity of each dancer.” - Eve Beauvallet, Libération

A self-taught hip-hop dancer, Amala Dianor attended the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine d’Angers, graduating in 2002. For ten years, he worked as a performer, drawing inspiration from a wide range of techniques. In 2012, he founded his own company after winning two prizes at the 2011 Reconnaissance competition for his first choreography, Crossroad. The choreographer is quickly identified for the singularity of his elegant and organic writing, which is part of formal research on movement, at the crossroads of styles. Sliding from one grammar to another with virtuosity, he strips choreographic techniques of their spectacular dimensions to preserve only raw movement. Attracted by the encounter and dialogue between beings, he deploys a dance fusion that hybridizes forms and opens up poetics of otherness. Since 2014, he has been working with electro-soul composer Awir Leon, who creates the music for his shows. He also regularly works with musicians, visual artists, actors, writers and calligraphers.

In 2019, he was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres medal.

In 2021, with visual artist Grégoire Korganow, he created a collection of dance films, entitled CinéDanse, which already includes 6 short films that have been chosen in renowned selections. In 2022, he was one of 4 European choreographers selected by the Big Pulse Dance Alliance network. The same year, he presented the Siguifin cooperation project in Europe, including One Dance Festival, aimed at highlighting the creativity of artists based in West Africa, and signed a piece for the South African urban group Via Katlehong, which had its French Premiere at the Avignon Festival.

In 2023, the choreographer created a filmed dance concert, Love You, Drink Water, and DUB, a large-scale work for 11 dancers from all over the world with live music, in association with composer Awir Leon and visual artist Grégoire Korganow. Today, his company has 21 pieces and 6 short films in its repertoire, and presents an average of 90 dates a year in France and around the world, with the support of prestigious institutions. A prolific artist, he likes to inscribe his research in perennial territories and pass it on.