Marcos Morau
La Veronal
Marcos Morau (Valencia, Spain, 1982) is a choreographer, director, and multidisciplinary artist. Trained in Valencia, Barcelona, and New York, he has developed a language that intertwines dance, theatre, photography, and visual arts, creating imaginary worlds in which movement and image merge.
In 2005, he founded La Veronal, the company of which he remains artistic director and choreographer. His works have been presented in more than thirty countries, and he has created pieces for some of the most prestigious international companies, including Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, Royal Danish Ballet, Ballet Nacional de España, Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, and Carte Blanche Norway.
Considered one of the most influential figures on the contemporary European choreographic scene, he was the youngest artist ever to receive Spain’s National Dance Award. In 2023, he was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and was named Best Choreographer of the Year by Tanz magazine in both 2023 and 2024.
Since 2025, he has been Associate Curator of Oriente Occidente, working alongside the Festival’s artistic direction in shaping its future projects.
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.
