David Bowie dance show Subject to Change to open at Sadler's Wells after Luxembourg premiere
A new David Bowie dance show, Subject to Change, created by Spanish choreographer Marcos Morau, will be staged at Sadler's Wells in London in autumn 2028 after a world premiere in Luxembourg, before travelling to Tokyo in 2029.
David Bowie dance show Subject to Change to open at Sadler's Wells after Luxembourg premiere
The dance work, titled Subject to Change: A Dance for David Bowie, reaches Sadler's Wells in autumn 2028 following its world premiere in Luxembourg, with a Tokyo visit planned for 2029. Its creator, Spanish choreographer Marcos Morau, is building the piece around Bowie's repeated self-reinventions, describing the singer as someone who "practised a form of artistic reincarnation".
Bowie's transformations as inspiration
Morau draws on the full gallery of David Bowie alter egos in the show. The cast of personas includes the pierrot, Halloween Jack from the Diamond Dogs era and, most famously, Ziggy Stardust, alongside Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke.
The body is his starting point. Each alter ego, he said, brought out a different physicality, and "For Bowie, the body was just as important as the music or the costumes".
Bowie's dance roots run through the project: he was taught by the mime Lindsay Kemp, who remembered him joining improvisations such as sailors drowning at sea, and Kemp directed him in the 1967 show Pierrot in Turquoise, failing to persuade him to take the role of Puss in Boots. Bowie later worked with choreographers including Édouard Lock and Annie-B Parson.
- Among Bowie's alter egos are the pierrot, Halloween Jack and Ziggy Stardust
- Halloween Jack belongs to the Diamond Dogs era
- Ziggy Stardust remains the best known of the personas
Morau sees a larger meaning in those transformations: "In a world obsessed with categorising us and making us follow certain patterns, Bowie turned his body into an act of defiance". What interests him, he said, is that Bowie "managed to turn his own body into a territory of fiction, allowing those fictions to become part of reality".
Songs reworked into a collective experience
The show's choral arrangements of Bowie songs are central to the concept. Bowie's songs will be interwoven with choral sounds from around the world and the voice of Spanish singer Maria Arnal. By drawing on different choral traditions, Morau hopes to "transform something deeply individual into a collective experience", exploring "what happens when his songs leave behind the voice we all know and travel towards other voices, other cultures and other generations".
For the choreographer, a work stays alive only while it keeps being transformed, and he believes "the best way to remain faithful to Bowie is to dare to change him".
"I'm not interested in reproducing Bowie or creating a nostalgic tribute."
The words are Morau's, and they mark the show's distance from homage.
The creative team behind the show
Several of Morau's regular collaborators are on board. His recent work gives a sense of what to expect: Horses, made for Nederlands Dans Theater in 2024, put animalistic dancers on mean streets, while Étude, performed earlier this year by the Paris Opera Ballet, used a swinging replica of the Palais Garnier auditorium chandelier.
- Set design is by Max Glaenzel, who designed both Horses and Étude
- Costumes are by Silvia Delagneau
- Musical direction is shared by Alex Röser Vatiché and Ben Meerwein
- The production is co-produced by Sadler's Wells, Bunkamura in Japan and Morau's company La Veronal
The show's promotional image uses a black vinyl striped jumpsuit known as Tokyo Pop, designed by Kansai Yamamoto for Bowie to wear as Ziggy in 1973.
Bowie's renewed presence on stage and screen
Subject to Change arrives ten years after Bowie's death, in a period of renewed visibility for his work. A 3D documentary about him was unveiled at this year's Venice film festival. London's Lightroom is currently running David Bowie: You're Not Alone, an hour-long immersive portrait, and next month the V&A's Bowie archive - which holds Yamamoto's costumes for Ziggy Stardust - sets out on tour.
The next step on the show's own path is the Luxembourg premiere, after which it reaches Sadler's Wells in London in autumn 2028 and Tokyo in 2029.
