A leading name in European contemporary dance, Marcos Morau and his company La Veronal present “Totentanz”, a show conceived for unconventional spaces where death — that age-old figure, feared yet fascinating — takes centre stage. Drawing inspiration from the medieval tradition of danse macabre (“dance of death”), the performance invokes a collective ritual for our times: a nameless mourning, a meditation on the fragility of life and its indiscernable end.

In a society that has normalised violence yet cast aside its rites, “Totentanz” proposes a choreography that dives into the unknown. Two inert bodies, almost ghosts, mark the threshold between worlds — they are guides, perhaps relics, perhaps only masks. The audience is involved from the very start in a session of choreographic spiritualism, where movement and sound operate as devices for summoning. Fear is not warded off, it is choreographed.

Between celebration and collapse, the piece sketches an emotional journey that defies logic: what does it mean to die in a world that has already lost the meaning of life? Death, so often pushed away, here becomes an active presence, a critical lens, a dancing figure.

With “Totentanz”, Marcos Morau and La Veronal return to the power of gestures as a means of thinking, and to the stage as a place of remembrance. A show that does not seek answers, but rather invokes questions that have haunted us for centuries: where are we going, who are we, and what remains after the final dance?

Note: This performance contains strobe lighting.