'Let's dance," sang David Bowie in 1983, commanding: "Put on your red shoes and dance the blues." That call is to be answered – with footwear TBC – by an international dance production featuring new choral arrangements of songs from throughout his career.
Subject to Change: A Dance for David Bowie will be staged at Sadler's Wells in London in autumn 2028 after a world premiere in Luxembourg. It will visit Tokyo in 2029. The show will explore how Bowie "practised a form of artistic reincarnation" according to Spanish choreographer Marcos Morau who is taking inspiration from the superstar's transformations into personas such as Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke.
"One of the greatest dangers for an artist is ending up resembling themselves too much," said Morau. "Bowie turned change into a way of remaining true to himself. That inspires me deeply. I believe every new work should force us to let go of some certainty. Art shouldn't serve to confirm who we are, but rather to accept that life transforms us, that we change over time, and that our own contradictions help us grow."
Orchestrations of pop and rock classics have powered recent hit dance productions such as Black Sabbath: The Ballet and a reworking of The Who's Quadrophenia, bringing in new audiences. In Subject to Change, Bowie's songs will be interwoven with choral sounds from around the world and the voice of Spanish singer Maria Arnal. "I'm not interested in reproducing Bowie or creating a nostalgic tribute," said Morau, who wants to explore "what happens when his songs leave behind the voice we all know and travel towards other voices, other cultures and other generations". By employing different choral traditions, he hopes to "transform something deeply individual into a collective experience. I like to think that a work of art remains alive as long as we are able to transform it, and that perhaps the best way to remain faithful to Bowie is to dare to change him."
Over his career, Bowie collaborated with significant choreographers including Édouard Lock and Annie-B Parson. He was taught dance by the great mime Lindsay Kemp who recalled him taking part in improvisations such as sailors drowning at sea. Kemp directed Bowie in a 1967 theatre show, Pierrot in Turquoise, and tried – but failed – to get him to play Puss in Boots.
The pierrot became one of Bowie's alter egos – others included Halloween Jack from his Diamond Dogs era and, most famously, Ziggy Stardust, the intergalactic rockstar who "took it all too far but, boy, could he play guitar". A black vinyl jumpsuit with stripes known as Tokyo Pop, designed by Kansai Yamamoto for Bowie to wear as Ziggy in 1973, is used in the promotional image for Subject to Change.
Each of his alter egos ushered in a new musical direction and a fresh look for Bowie but also brought out a different physicality, said Morau. "For Bowie, the body was just as important as the music or the costumes. It wasn't simply a matter of appearance, but of how he inhabited space. What fascinates me is that he managed to turn his own body into a territory of fiction, allowing those fictions to become part of reality. When you can transform yourself with that kind of freedom, you can also find new ways of living. In a world obsessed with categorising us and making us follow certain patterns, Bowie turned his body into an act of defiance."
Morau is an in-demand choreographer whose works include Horses (2024), created for Nederlands Dans Theater, which featured animalistic dancers prowling around mean streets to music by contemporary classical composer Caroline Shaw. Étude, performed earlier this year by the Paris Opera Ballet, upended the conventions of ballet. The former piece featured dancers wielding giant lamp posts; the latter used a swinging replica of the chandelier in the auditorium of Paris's Palais Garnier. Both sets were designed by Max Glaenzel who will work on Subject to Change. The costumes will be by another of Morau's regular collaborators, Silvia Delagneau, and the musical direction is by Alex Röser Vatiché and Ben Meerwein. It is co-produced by Sadler's Wells, Bunkamura in Japan and Morau's company La Veronal.
Ten years after Bowie's death, the musician continues to fascinate. Earlier this year, a 3D documentary about him was unveiled at the Venice film festival. David Bowie: You're Not Alone, an hour-long immersive portrait, is running at Lightroom in London and the V&A's Bowie archive, featuring Yamamoto's costumes for Ziggy Stardust, goes on tour next month.
Last weekend, Let's Dance inspired a paso doble on Strictly. What is Morau's favourite Bowie song to dance to? "Space Oddity – it's probably not the most obvious choice for dancing, but that's precisely why I like it," he said. "There's something profoundly choreographic about imagining a body losing gravity and drifting away from everything familiar."