Review: Carlos Pons Guerra’s ‘Mariposa’ on tour with DeNada Dance Theatre
Paul Arrowsmith sees Mariposa in Lancaster, the opening night of a UK tour – “full of poetry and lingers in the memory”
| Title | Mariposa |
| Company | DeNada Dance Theatre |
| Venue | The Dukes, Lancaster |
| Date | 8 October 2024 |
| Reviewer | Paul Arrowsmith |
Music snobs tend to disparage the operas of Giacomo Puccini. “Film music”, I remember a colleague sniffing after The Royal Opera’s production of Turandot at the Wembley Arena. Scarcely Verona but… I recall too an Italian friend in tears after only the first act of La bohème at Glyndebourne. It was all too evident that things would not end well for Mimì.
And there is Puccini’s great skill. His operas are calibrated – well, yes, manipulated – to create maximum dramatic and emotional impact. But Madama Butterfly has always left me cold, even with the best of introductions, the porcelain fragile Mirella Freni in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s 1970s film.
So, I cannot say I was looking forward to Carlos Pons Guerra’s Mariposa – Spanish for butterfly – which he describes as a queer tragedy inspired by Puccini.
Guerra is not the first choreographer to translate the opera into dance. In recent years Butterfly was an obvious choice for David Nixon at Northern Ballet in his quest to expand the number of narrative ballets with a recognisable name at the box office. Seventy years ago, Frederick Ashton essayed the story, first with his Entrada de Madame Butterfly, a vehicle for Margot Fonteyn using music from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado (!), coutured by Christian Dior no less. A year later he revisited the subject in Madame Chrysanthème, based on the autobiographical memoire of Pierre Loti – very much the anti-hero, OK the ****face of the opera.
Even Ashton’s queer eye would not have produced a work as audacious as Guerra’s Mariposa. (Well, perhaps with Illuminations he did). But audacious is what Guerra does. Yet, parallels with Madama Butterfly only take us so far. In Mariposa, currently being toured by DeNada Dance Theatre, Puccini’s geisha heroine becomes a Cuban rent boy. Pinkerton is not the two-faced, two-timing husband of Puccini but somebody conflicted about his sexuality.
Guerra’s Mariposa is a perversion of Puccini’s opera, a provocative one. Puccini’s heroine is the quintessential victim, changing religion to marry Pinkerton. Mariposa – in the excellent performance by Miles Kearly – has a predatory glint, almost feral, calculatedly changing sex to keep hold of Preston, the Pinkerton character.
Mariposa is let down by the score Luis Miguel Cobo – it mooches along rather. Even with my antipathy to Puccini’s opera, I miss the emotional impact of the big set pieces, notably the ecstatic duet that crowns the first act. But it is testimony to Guerra’s dramatic skill that the equivalent pas de deux (with Daniel Baines as Preston, excellent) has such emotional resonance and intensity.
I take issue with Guerra when he describes Mariposa as a tragedy. There are repeated images of a cocoon, at the end of the first act as Mariposa embarks on his sex change; at the start of the second, to ominous medical noises, as the operation is completed. The cocoon imagery is repeated at the close in a stunning theatrical coup as Mariposa is transmogrified – I use the word carefully – emerging in a rather fabulous, topless shimmery ball gown – not Dior (Fonteyn would never have worn that – in public at least) but full credit to designer Ryan Laight for creating such a glamorous moment. We see Mariposa as seemingly newly confident in his/her own skin.
That was a striking end, hugely redemptive in my eyes, to a thought-provoking work. There is much that I have not done justice to here – suggestions of Baba the Turk in Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, George Balanchine’s Prodigal Son. Intended or not I don’t know. Carlos Pons Guerra is hugely mercurial – and undeniably theatrical.
But, as a fellow audience member said as we left the theatre, Mariposa is full of poetry. And a work that lingers in the memory. How often can you say that?
THE TOUR
Lancaster: 8 Oct / The Dukes Lancaster / 01524 598500
Poole: 15 Oct / The Lighthouse Poole / 01202 280000
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: 15—16 Nov / Teatro Pérez Galdós
Southampton: 22-23 Nov / MAST Southampton / 023 8071 1811
Nottingham: 26 Nov / Lakeside Arts / 0115 846 7777
Harrogate: 14 Feb / Harrogate Theatre / 01423 502116
London: 25—26 Feb / The Place / 020 7121 1100
Leeds: 14—15 March / Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre / 0113 220 8008
Wolverhampton: 21 March / Wolverhampton Arena / 01902 321321
Paul Arrowsmith has been watching dance for 45 years after Peter Wright’s Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet was his baptism in dance in the UK. He wrote for Dancing Times between 2010-22, reporting from China, Greece, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany and Denmark, along the way interviewing Alessandra Ferri, Akram Khan and Miyako Yoshida among many. He has a particular interest in design for dance and has profiled the work of Natalia Goncharova, Jürgen Rose, John Macfarlane and Anthony McDonald. Paul collaborated with Sir Peter Wright on his memoires Wrights & Wrongs and in 2016 was programme consultant for the BBC documentary, The Ballet Master: Sir Peter Wright at 90.
