Marcos Morau to create a major new dance work inspired by David Bowie
SUBJECT TO CHANGE – A Dance for David Bowie will premiere in Luxembourg in spring 2028 before coming to Sadler’s Wells that autumn and to Tokyo’s Bunkamura in 2029, with Bowie’s original vocals woven into a new score featuring the singer María Arnal.
The Spanish choreographer Marcos Morau is making a full-length dance work celebrating David Bowie, in a three-way production between Sadler’s Wells in London, Bunkamura in Tokyo and Morau’s own company, La Veronal.
SUBJECT TO CHANGE – A Dance for David Bowie will have its world premiere at Les Théâtres de la Ville in Luxembourg in spring 2028. Its UK premiere follows at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in autumn 2028, and its Asian premiere at Bunkamura in spring 2029. Casting and further details are still to be announced.
Ziggy, Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke
The piece takes its cue from Bowie’s succession of personas – Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke and beyond – each with its own relationship between voice, body and identity. Bowie’s songs and original vocals are reworked and interwoven with choral sounds from around the world and the voice of María Arnal.
Alex Röser Vatiché and Ben Meerwein of OZCUR provide musical direction, with costumes by Silvia Delagneau and sets by Max Glaenzel. Co-producing partners include Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura, La Biennale di Venezia and the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon, with more to be announced.
Morau describes Bowie as practising a kind of artistic reincarnation, creating persona after persona and destroying each so the next could be born, until the final transformation, Blackstar, turned his own death into part of the artwork:
SUBJECT TO CHANGE is a work about that cycle of reincarnation. About the phenomenon itself: the act of dying and being reborn, again and again, as a way of remaining alive. It is an honour to create a new piece that takes its cue from an artist who is a great personal inspiration to me.
Sir Alistair Spalding, artistic director and co-chief executive of Sadler’s Wells, calls Bowie “a true icon” whose artistry crossed music, fashion, cinema and performance. Because Bowie had “a truly global outlook and reach”, Spalding says, “it only feels right that internationalism is at the very heart of this production”.
For Bunkamura, president and CEO Hajime Shimada says few artists have transformed themselves as radically, or as often, as Bowie, giving later generations “permission to become someone entirely new”. Morau, he says, is one of those artists, and “his singular vision makes him exactly the right person to enter Bowie’s world”.
Morau and La Veronal
Morau has directed La Veronal since 2004; the company won Spain’s National Dance Award in 2013 and has performed in more than 30 countries, including at Sadler’s Wells, the Théâtre National de Chaillot and the Biennale di Venezia. He was made a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in France in 2023, and Tanz magazine named him choreographer of the year in 2023 and 2025.
He has created works for Paris Opera Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon and the Royal Danish Ballet, among others. He has been an associate artist at Staatsballett Berlin since 2023, and is a resident choreographer at Nederlands Dans Theater and a guest artist at the Triennale di Milano. Bunkamura worked with him on a dance adaptation of Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Kinkakuji).
More information: sadlerswells.com/bowie
