Marcos Morau

Half-length portrait of a woman in a soft white dress. On her head she wears a wreath of flowers, also white, from which descends a long elaborate veil.

Sonoma | ph Marina Rodriguez

Photograph of the show "Sonoma": some women, in traditional clothes with wide skirts, hold and pull ropes tied around a large wooden crucifix lying on the stage.

Sonoma | ph Alfred Mauve

Three dancers on the stage during the performance Sonoma. They are sitting on the floor with their legs bent on one side of their bodies and their arms crossed in front of them.

Sonoma | ph Alfred Mauve

Photograph of the show Sonoma: in the foreground we see two bodies wearing large masks representing elderly women with long white hair pulled back.

Sonoma | ph Alfred Mauve

Photograph of the Sonoma show: some dancers, in white traditional short-sleeved dresses, reach out to a companion. She is suspended above a cage and is holding a glowing sphere.

Sonoma | ph Alfred Mauve

Photograph of the Sonoma show: several women, in white traditional sleeveless dresses, are facing the camera. On their heads they wear large flower crowns that frame their faces like aureoles.

Sonoma | ph Alfred Mauve

La Veronal

Marcos Morau (Valencia, Spain, 1982) studied choreography at the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona, the Conservatorio Superior de Danza de Valencia and Movement Research in New York. He made his choreographic assistantship project with Nederlands Dans Theater II and with IT Dansa company directed by Catherine Allard. His artistic skills are not limited to dance but extended into disciplines such as photography and drama.

He builds worlds and imaginary landscapes where movement and image meet and shallow one another.

In 2005 he founded his company, La Veronal, of which he is still director, choreographer, and set, light and wardrobe designer. He also created pieces for the National Dance Company of Spain, Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, Skånes Dansteater, Göteborg Operans Danskompani, Ballet de Lorraine or Carte Blanche Norway, among others.

Since 2020, Marcos Morau is an associated artist of Oriente Occidente. In the same year, together with his company La Veronal, he works on Sonoma, a project that seeks an escape from reality starting from the dreamlike Spain of Buñuel as much as from the folk songs of Greek, Russian, and Latin American traditions.

It should happen that suddenly, with the advent of the Covid pandemic, the reality that is experienced on the street ends up far surpassing that created by the artists. Creation begins to take new paths, it must deviate from its course.

This is how Sonoma takes shape, a show with an onirical setting and an entirely female cast, a place alien to the laws of physics where the ordinary becomes extraordinary and reason is set aside.

The debut takes place at the 40th edition of Oriente Occidente Dance Festival, in September 2020. Sonoma, co-produced by Oriente Occidente, is then awarded by Danza&Danza the prize "Best contemporary show 2020".

Buñuel has never been so up-to-date. He was able to see what the future held in store for us by discovering, in the noise of the drums of Calanda and Aragon, that scream coming from the bowels. He was already in the present: he listened to the sound of the abyss that opens when the human imagination is free but man is not.
I am interested in the human need to feel alive, part of society, wrapped up in one's own desires and fears and in the fact that sometimes in order to survive it is necessary to invent a new reality.

- Marcos Morau

laveronal.com