camilla strandhagen
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mariposeo (2025)
The Latin American Spanish term mariposeo (to be or behave like a butterfly) references both queer camouflage and excess. Based on literary and ethnographic chronicles, the work engages with themes of transmutation, employing Baroque theatrical conventions, melodrama, mystical masquerade dances, video projections, lighting and special effects.
mariposeo is a trans-species operatic performance, structured as a ceremony that starts in the theater and culminates with a living butterfly opera house eclosure.
Conceived as a beyond-the-human collaboration, the piece explores practices of the closet, mimetic colonial legacies and coded visibility, engaging in a discrete negotiation between concealment and disclosure.
Credits
by juan felipe amaya gonzález (jfag)
with: camilla strandhagen, ainhoa hernández escudero
music and performance: carlos andrés rico
art direction (set and costume): luisa rodríguez jiménez (aka mujer cobra)
light design: eliška kociánová
video: chun shing au
production assistance: mel brinkmann
dramaturgical support: joshua wicke
entomological consultant: emily burdfield-steel
outside eye: vincent riebeek
mentors: catalina insignares, philip venables
tutors: konstantina georgelou, jeroen fabius
Supported by DAS Graduate School, AHK Talent Grant, and the Goethe Institut International Co-Production Fund, in co-production with Teatro del Embuste (Bogotá) and Juan Pablo Castro