Under the flickering neon lights of a distant Caribbean port, a local rent boy and a foreign sailor fall ominously in love in choreographer Carlos Pons Guerra’s inventive reimagining of Puccini’s seminal opera.
DeNada Dance Theatre’s Madame Butterfly is immersed in a mist of Havana smoke, within which a young man is asked to sacrifice his gender in exchange of love and a better life.
Mariposa is an operatic dance drama that transports Puccini’s Orientalist libretto to post-revolution Cuba, to a dockland world of faded showgirls, hopeful rent boys, troubled sailors and santeria spirits. Engulfed in a tropical storm of repressed desires, this brand new production is a passionate and deeply moving exploration of what we are ready to sacrifice in order to be loved and accepted.
Set to an original score by Spanish composer Luis Miguel Cobo, which takes its inspiration from Caribbean sounds as well as Puccini, with libretto by French- Indian writer Karthika Nair, with designs by Ryan Laight and lighting by Barnaby Booth.
Pre event talk: Dancing Queer History
6:30pm, Drama Studio Rehearsal Rooms, free – book in advance.
In this dynamic and accessible lecture demonstration, choreographer and PhD candidate Carlos Pons Guerra will explore how dance is a uniquely queer way of recording, archiving and talking to (or in) history. Using queer literary theory, adaptation studies and audiovisual examples from his work for DeNada Dance Theatre, Carlos will offer a fun introduction to the queerness of dancing and offer insight into how the body can make for an exciting, dramatic and camp archive for the narratives that have often been relegated to the margins of history.
Suitable for all adult audiences.
- Featured in
- LGBTQ+ History Month in Sheffield
