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 for 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.

★★★★ – Financial Times

‘There is nothing like Pons Guerra’s work elsewhere on the British stage’ – Dance Europe

‘Pons Guerra’s Mariposa is full of vivid images, super choreography, and impressive and thoughtful characterisation’ – Dancing Times

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