Queer dance Mariposa set for UK tour

Mariposa, DeNada Dance Theatre’s queer dance take on Madame Butterfly, will tour from October 2024

Image by Emma Kauldhar.

If you’ve ever felt drawn to the drama of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly but find yourself increasingly put off by the undoubted problematic colonial and gender aspects of that 1904 piece, DeNada Dance Theatre may have the solution in Mariposa, a queer dance take on that iconic work. 

In this interpreation, Nagasaki is exchanged for a distant Caribbean port, where under the flickering neon lights, a local rent boy and a foreign sailor fall ominously in love and a young man is asked to sacrifice his gender in exchange for love and a better life…

Photo by Josh Hawkins

Choreographed by one of the UK’s leading lights of contemporary queer dance, Carlos Pons Guerra (pictured) will bring his trademark stylish theatricality and his Hispanic / Latinx cultural influence to explore an LGBTQ+ narrative within Butterfly. Expect a world about to be engulfed in a literal and metaphorical storm as passions and repressed desires come soaring to the surface. 

Musically, award-winning composer Luis Miguel Cobo will bring an original score which takes its influence as much as the sounds of the Caribbean as Puccini’s famed work. 

Mariposa will fearless explore gender, cultural and sexual identity through vivid imagery, intense choreography and an irresistible queer aesthetic. 

Mariposa Tour Dates

Tuesday 8 October
The Dukes, Lancaster
BOOK HERE

Tuesday 15 October
The Lighthouse, Poole
BOOK HERE

Tuesday 22 October
Drama Studio, Sheffield
BOOK HERE

Friday 22 & Saturday 23 November
MAST, Southampton
BOOK HERE

Tuesday 26 November
Lakeside Arts, Nottingham
BOOK HERE

Friday 14 February
Harrogate Theatre
BOOK HERE 

Tuesday 25 & Wednesday 26 February
The Place, London
BOOK HERE

Friday 14 & Saturday 15 March
Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre, Leeds
BOOK HERE

Friday 21 March
Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton
BOOK HERE

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