Queer dance Mariposa set for UK tour
Mariposa, DeNada Dance Theatre’s queer dance take on Madame Butterfly, will tour from October 2024
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…
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
Author Profile
Latest entries
- 12 January 2026The Recs' WritersNeil Bartlett
- 12 January 2026The Recs' WritersJamie Armitage
- 12 January 2026The Recs' WritersGary Wilmot MBE
- 31 December 2025TheatreThe Recs’ Theatre Review of 2025