‘The Pedro Almodovar of dance’ Carlos Pons Guerra and DeNada Dance Theatre present Mariposa, a Queer Tragedy inspired by Puccini’s Madame Butterfly.

Under the flickering neon lights of a distant Caribbean port, 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…

Mariposa (‘butterfly’ in Spanish) is choreographer Carlos Pons Guerra’s queer reimagining of Puccini’s seminal opera, Madame Butterfly. An operatic dance drama, it transports Puccini’s Orientalist libretto to post-revolution Cuba, to a dockland world of faded showgirls, hopeful rent boys, troubled sailors and divinequeerspirits. Engulfed in a tropical storm of repressed desires, the production is a passionate and deeply moving exploration of what we are ready to sacrifice in order to be loved and accepted.

Nicknamed ‘the Pedro Almodovar of dance’ by the BBC, Carlos Pons Guerra is one of the UK’s leading voices in contemporary queer dance. With a truly distinctive style, theatricality and aesthetic, his work explores gender, cultural and sexual identity. Carlos’ work often stems from his personal experience and his desire to put LGBTQ+ narratives on the dance stage, stylishly staged in ways that evoke his Hispanic/Latinx cultural heritage.

Created in 2021, Mariposa revisits the problematic gender and colonialist aspects of Madame Butterfly and asks how iconic operas and narratives like this can remain relevant today.  

Mariposa is set to an original score by three-time winner of the Spanish MAX Awards for the Performing Arts, Luis Miguel Cobo, which takes its inspiration from Caribbean sounds as well as Puccini. The libretto is by French-Indian writer Karthika Nair (whose feminist, award-winning poetic retelling of the Mahabharata, Until the Lions, was adapted for dance by Akram Khan).  Costume and set designs are by 2023 Olivier Award Nominee Ryan Dawson Laight and lighting is by Guerra’s long-time collaborator Barnaby Booth.

An exceptional cast includes Miles Kearly (Arlene Phillips’ House of Flamenka) as Mariposa, Dan Baines (BalletBoyz) as Preston, the sailor, Holly Saw (Matthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands) as Kate, while Elle Francis-Woods (Northern Ballet and Leipzig Ballet) and Jaivant Patel (Jaivant Patel Dance) will share the role of Madame Gertrudis, the brothel owner. 

We met Carlos Pons Guerra and here is everything you need to know.

What shall we expect from Mariposa? Can you tell us more about this performance?

I think audiences are in for a very emotional, fun, camp, but also poignant and meaningful ride! The show takes a queer perspective on the iconic opera, Madame Butterfly, which people may also recognize from the musical Miss Saigon. This time, the narrative takes place in Cuba after the Revolution, a time of political turmoil and much repression for the LGBTQIA+ community. It tells the story of a Cuban rent boy, called Mariposa, who falls in love with a foreign sailor, who has a troubled sexuality. The sailor promises to return and take Mariposa out of Cuba if Mariposa changes his gender identity for him. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but it does get very dramatic! There is a lot of comedy though, with larger-than-life characters like faded showgirls and queer divinities and spirits. The original score is beautiful, with Caribbean music and even a couple of lip-synchs, and Ryan Laight’s costumes are fabulous. The cast of dancers is stunning- not only are they explosive dancers but also amazing actors.

Mariposa is a very accessible dance drama- people who have never seen dance can come and completely understand the story, very much like watching a film without words and with a lot of dancing. It will definitely be a good night out at the theatre!

How easy or difficult is to choreograph a queer take on a classic opera, Madame Butterfly in this case?

As a queer man and an artist, one of the things that troubles me the most is how historically, LGBTQ+ people have been silenced in what society considers “high culture”. It’s not until recently that queer voices have appeared in literature, music and theatre- but I think opera and ballet in particular have worked hard at “being straight” and avoided telling our stories. So for me it’s very important to turn to these classic stories, that people have adored for centuries, but which have excluded us queer folks. It’s almost like saying: “yeah, we existed then too!”.

“Queering” a classic is a challenge, but an exciting one. It involves a bit of detective work, where you are finding the gaps, the silences, in the story, where queer experience has been omitted. As an artist, I always start from personal experience, so the process for me also involves searching within my lived experience and seeing what similarities there are with the original story. For example, Madame Butterfly is so much about renouncing a community, about family rejection and abandoning that which makes you, you, in hope that somebody will love and accept you. I think that is something that all LGBTQ+ people experience at some point in their lives. In the original opera, its Japanese female protagonist tries to perform the role of American wife, but fails. Speaking from my experience as a gay man, I feel we’re always having to perform- being more butch, more fem, more bear, more straight (the list is endless!) depending on the situation. Mariposa is built around these premises, so in a way it transforms the original story to talk about queer experience.

You have been nicknamed the Pedro Almodovar of dance’ by the BBC. How do you feel being one of the UK’s leading voices in contemporary queer dance? Does it create any pressure?

That is probably the best thing anyone has ever called me- I’m not sure I can live up to that, but Pedro Almodóvar has been my artistic guru ever since I was a teenager, so it really means a lot! For me, each one of his films is like a masterclass in how to tell a story, how to create characters and how to explore gender and sexuality. I feel like you can see his influence in most of my works— Mariposa included; so if you like and know your Almodóvar, you will definitely enjoy Mariposa, as it is spiked with references to his films. In terms of pressure, I feel that what’s most important to me is offering representation to our community. There simply isn’t enough dance work onstage that represents us queer people, so the pressure I feel- which is at the same time my driving force- is more about ensuring that our stories get told, and that they get told in ways that have an impact on people, however they identify.  It’s about using dance to show audiences that there are other ways of experiencing love, desire, identity, the world- other than the heteronormative ways that have driven most of our cultural works.

How would you describe your work?

Some of the words that come to mind are kitsch, entertaining, camp and poignant. For me, making dance is very much about communicating with an audience; it is a dialogue. I feel it is very important to remember that dance is an entertainment, that it can really transport people away from their realities, and that doesn’t mean that it can’t pack a punch and carry important messages. So I work a lot with dance that has an element of showmanship, spectacle, and elaborate costume and set, because I love creating new and exciting worlds onstage.

How do you identify?

I identify as cis male and gay. What is really wonderful about the cast of Mariposa is its diversity. Most of the company are queer and have diverse gender identities, as well as varied cultural heritages. Each performer and team member brings their lived experience into the narrative, and I think that makes it particularly powerful. It’s a real privilege to get to work with this group of artists.

How is your queer identity and your Latinx/Hispanic background influencing your work?

One of my artistic mentors is Venezuelan choreographer Javier de Frutos. At the start of my career, he advised me: “Carlos, whatever you do, you will always be a gay Catholic boy from Gran Canaria. So go with it.” He was right, and I think that’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve had. I moved to the UK when I was seventeen, and I think living away from home really makes you start thinking about your culture in ways you took for granted before. I’m from the Canary Islands, which culturally I consider a bridge between Spain and the Caribbean and Latin America. When I started making work, I realized that Latinx culture is so performative, so camp, and so choreographic. Above all it’s full of drama- I grew up watching Mexican telenovelas and I think every one of my works is a telenovela in a way! Our music is so rich, our aesthetic is colourful and sways between contemporary and old-worldly, there are all these tensions between Catholicism, repression, passion and desire…It’s hugely inspiring, and there is so much to draw from. I’ve tried to make work that doesn’t draw on this, but it’s never quite satisfied me.

This performance will tour in the UK and will have the chance to be enjoyed by many people all over the country. How does that make you feel?

I am incredibly excited and grateful. We started creating Mariposa back in 2016, and due to the pandemic, it didn’t premiere until 2021, but only had a couple of shows as most venues were still not open. After all those years developing the production, it felt like such a shame that it wouldn’t get to fly further. And now we’ve got the opportunity to return to it, and to share it in so many venues- it’s a real privilege. Our cast is a really beautiful group of dancers who tell this story so well- I’m very happy that so many people will to get to see them do so,.

How would you describe the British audience? Is it different to other audiences and to Hispanic/Latinx audiences?

You must be familiar with the proverb, “no one is a prophet in their own land”? Funnily, my work has hardly been shown in Spain, so I feel I know very little about its audience, and much more familiar with the British audience! British audiences have always been very warm to us, people from all walks of life come to watch DeNada- whether they identify as queer or not- and that is so wonderful to see. When we last performed Mariposa, so many people shared how they had connected with the story in such different ways. What’s really great about this tour though is that we are finally taking my work home- we’ll be performing at the opera house in Gran Canaria. I’m really excited to see how audiences of the same cultural background as the story react to it. I’m also a little nervous too!

What is the best comment or reaction you have received so far?

It’s not so much a comment, but rather, a sound. Without giving too much away, there is a moment in Mariposa where the stage goes dark and the music fades into silence. In every city the show has gone to so far, at that moment we always heard sniffling and the sound of tears. It’s not that I like to make people cry, but that we had moved them so much, and that they had invested so much in the main character…wow, as an artist there’s no feeling quite like that.

What are your future plans?

I’ve got a couple of creations coming up with some exciting ballet and contemporary dance companies coming up, in the UK and abroad. And once we finish touring Mariposa, DeNada Dance Theatre will return to creating my queer adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II– which tells the real-life story of a medieval English king who was in love with his male court favourite. We started creating this in the spring, and are setting the story not in medieval England, but in the scariest place for a queer person- high school! We’re having a lot of fun creating it so watch this space for future developments.

See Mariposa at The Dukes on Tuesday 8 October. 

Book Your Tickets Here!