Marcos Morau

Marcos Morau / La Veronal

Marcos Morau is one of Europe’s most prominent contemporary choreographers. Winner of Spain’s National Dance Prize in 2013, he currently creates works for leading international companies alongside his own productions with La Veronal. He founded La Veronal in 2005 as a collective bringing together artists from the worlds of dance, film, literature and photography. His artistic team is engaged in a constant search for new forms of expression and cultural references—primarily drawn from film, literature and photography—using narrative language to construct all-encompassing artistic worlds. La Veronal has developed a series of works that take a country or city as their point of departure, establishing an analogy between dance and geography. Rather than seeking to document or directly portray these places, the works draw on elements associated with their names to develop an idea or narrative. This imaginative approach has established the company as a distinctive and independent voice on the international contemporary arts scene.

Marcos Morau

Trained in Barcelona and New York in photography, movement and theatre, Marcos Morau constructs imaginary worlds and landscapes in which movement and image meet, collide and consume one another.

He graduated with the highest distinction for his final degree project and received the Special Prize for Creativity from Barcelona’s Institut del Teatre. His artistic expertise extends beyond dance to photography and dramaturgy, and he holds a Master’s degree in Dramaturgy Theory from the UAB, Pompeu Fabra University and the Institut del Teatre.

For over a decade, Morau has led La Veronal as its director and choreographer, while also designing sets, costumes and lighting. His work has been presented around the world at major festivals, theatres and international venues, including the Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris, the Venice Biennale, the Festival d’Avignon, Tanz im August in Berlin, Romaeuropa Festival, SIDance Festival in Seoul and Sadler’s Wells in London.

Alongside his work with La Veronal, Marcos Morau regularly creates for companies and theatres around the world, developing works that inhabit the space between dance and the wider performing arts. His collaborations include GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, Ballet de l’Opéra national du Rhin, the Royal Danish Ballet, Scapino Ballet, Carte Blanche, Ballet de Lorraine, Compañía Nacional de Danza and Luzerner Theater, among others.

The youngest artist ever to receive Spain’s National Dance Prize, Marcos Morau has developed an artistic language rooted in the legacy of abstract movement and physical theatre. His work is characterised by a powerful physical vocabulary that dismantles organic logic, dissects movement and reconfigures it into a distinctive choreographic identity.

Morau has also received the FAD Sebastià Gasch Award from the FAD Foundation for Arts and Design and the Time Out Award for Best Creator, among other distinctions. His works have received prizes at national and international choreography competitions, including the International Choreographic Competition Hannover and competitions in Copenhagen, Madrid and Maspalomas.

Alongside his creative practice, Morau teaches classes and workshops on creative processes and new dramaturgies at conservatoires, training programmes and universities, including the Institut del Teatre, the University of Strasbourg and Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris.

Morau’s future work looks towards new formats and artistic languages in which opera, dance and physical theatre interact more closely than ever, seeking new ways to express and communicate within our turbulent and ever-changing present.