Mariposa, A Queer Butterfly Review 3*
The Place hosts Mariposa, choreographer Carlos Pons Guerra’s queer take on Puccini’s Madama Butterfly for DeNada Dance Theatre
Mariposa is, to coin a phrase, a game of two halves; and if the very busy first half left me cold, I found the concise, focused second half tremendously moving.
A work by the UK-based Spanish choreographer Carlos Pons Guerra for his DeNada Dance Theatre, Mariposa is inspired by Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and billed as “a queer tragedy”.
In an impassioned programme note, Pons Guerra writes that the heroine of Puccini’s opera, Cio-Cio San, who “sacrifices everything so she can be loved and accepted”, epitomises “the queer experience’’; her counterpart in his adaptation is Mariposa (Spanish for butterfly), a rent boy who plies his trade on the docklands of 1970s Havana.
Against a translucent curtain vaguely reminiscent of a Japanese screen showing a diffuse print of a dockside (design Ryan Laight), Harry Alexander’s Mariposa restlessly paces the dimly lit stage (lighting Barnaby Booth). Ships hoot in the distance, overlaying the low, urgent strings of Luis Miguel Cobo’s score.
He is morose, on automatic pilot until he sees a foreign sailor (Daniel Baines). His attraction is immediate; and his attempts at seduction, at first rebuffed, finally win over the sailor.
DeNada Dance Theatre’s Mariposa, dancers Dan Baines and Harry Alexander. Photo Nacho Gonzalez
An intensely erotic duet carries all the charge of forbidden love – it’s gripping, but all too brief. Behind the curtain a female figure flits about on pointe, attracting the sailor’s attention; Mariposa attempts to mimic her, but the sailor leaves.
Then the action around a Mariposa practically catatonic with grief becomes very busy and dispersed. There are brief, rather inconsequential appearances by a brothel owner (Elle Fierce), and another sex worker (Bjorn Aslund). Tiresomely hyperactive sex tourists in straw hats and sun glasses come and go.
The score captures brief snatches of Puccini alongside Latin songs, laments of lost love; to the beat of Cuban drums Santeria deities in voluminous golden skirts, led by Ochún, goddess of love (an imposing Elle Fierce), carry out a frenzied transformation ceremony that ends with Mariposa entirely wrapped up in a length of cloth.
Act II starts with Mariposa slowly emerging from a cocoon, his feminine side now coming to the fore, his painful attempts to stand and walk on pointe shoes, aided by Ochún, deeply moving.
The sailor returns bringing Mariposa a brief moment of happiness.
DeNada Dance Theatre, Mariposa. Photo: Emma Kauldhar
But he is accompanied by his wife (Holly Shaw), and like the tragic Cio-Cio San Mariposa dies; the work ends with a scene of redemption as, now wearing a goddess’s gold skirt, Mariposa bourrées lightly into infinity and the freedom simply to be.
Harry Alexander is a beautiful dancer, his pointe work impressively graceful, and despite his rather one note acting, the work is at its best when closely focused on his character; which is not to say that the supporting cast of four, doubling in a variety of characters, are not excellent – they are.
I sense Mariposa would work better as a chamber piece, doing away with extraneous material (do we really need those pesky sex tourists?) and concentrating on the central figure of Mariposa and his tragic love affair.
© Teresa Guerreiro
(Banner image credit: DeNada Dance Theatre, Mariposa, dancers Dan Baines and Harry Alexander. Photo Nacho Gonzalez)
DeNada Dance Theatre is touring Mariposa. Full details here