STARDUST, a new work by Complexions Contemporary Ballet celebrating the music of David Bowie, will be performed at the Music Center this weekend in its Los Angeles premiere.

For many years following the 1972 release of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, Bowie had discussed staging alternative versions of his work beyond the concert stage:

Songs by Roxy Music replaced the Bowie material Todd Haynes had planned to use for his film Velvet Goldmine (1998) after Bowie made it clear he was still planning his own movie. But this never came to pass.

Similarly, talk of a Broadway show went nowhere until, at the end of his life, Bowie and Enda Walsh put together the off-Broadway musical Lazarus, directed by Ivo van Hove.

Bowie worked with Montréal’s La La La Human Steps for his Sound + Vision tour in 1990, and elsewhere in the dance world, Michael Clark is well known for his homages to Bowie. Come, Been and Gone utilized vintage numbers like “Jean Genie” and the title cut from Aladdin Sane, and after Bowie’s death in 2016, Clark reformated and retitled the work as To a Simple Rock ’n’ Roll… Song, which opened with “Blackstar” from Bowie’s final studio album.

Now, Complexions Contemporary Ballet’s founding choreographer Dwight Rhoden and his powerful company bring us STARDUST, which had its world premiere in Detroit in 2016. The show—which opens with “Lazarus”—brought down the house at the Joyce Theater last fall.

STARDUST will be preceded by the 30-minute piece BACH 25.

STARDUST—COMPLEXIONS CONTEMPORARY BALLET

Friday and Saturday, April 20 and 21, at 7:30 pm.

Sunday, April 22, at 2 pm.

Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

135 North Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles.

Top and above: Photographs by Moira Geist.

Below: Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Stardust. Photograph by Breeann Birr.