Un Break A Mozart / The DASH Ensemble

Un Break à Mozart was born of a desire to share – to create a dialogue through an encounter between France’s Centre Chorégraphique National (CCN) of La Rochelle/Poitou-Charentes and the Champs-Elysées Orchestra, two strongly typified artistic universes. On stage, ten musicians from the Orchestra, led by Philippe Herreweghe, respond to the ten hip hop dancers from choreographer and CCN Director Kader Attou’s dance company, Accrorap. Un Break à Mozart makes its way through Mozart’s unfinished work, “The Requiem,” arranged for strings by Peter Lichtenthal at the beginning of the 19th century. Having discarded the Latin text of the mass, this instrumental version of “The Requiem,” presented in the form of extracts, forms the basic structure of the performance. It provides a stage for the play of musical and choreographic resonances nourished by the worlds of the two companies for an original and promising encounter.


The DASH Ensemble is a New York City based contemporary dance group founded and directed by Gregory Dolbashian. Combining elements of modern, hip hop, floor work and physical theater, Dolbashian has created his own unique style of contemporary dance with an urban flair. The DASH seeks to bring out relatable human elements in all of its work using its complex and challenging movement language to express ideas about growth, love, loss, war, and determination. The company's work has been performed all over New York including The JOYCE Theater, NYU's Skirball Center, NYLA, The Riverside Church Theater, Bryant Park, and The Actor's Fund Theater. Dolbashian and his company recently worked in collaboration with artists of ABT for Daniil Simkin's upcoming INTENSIO project. The meaning behind The DASH comes from this idea: Birthdate (--) Death Date, where the dash in between signifies your lifespan. Life is The DASH, and everything that we focus our work on is about that life. Our work depicts our life, and the events that occur in it, no matter how big or how small, always feel epic. It is that feeling that we aim to deliver throughout our performance work.