One of the leading lights of the Leeds contemporary dance scene DeNada Dance Theatre presents the UK premiere of Carlos Pons Guerra’s Edward II

Leeds-based choreographer, Carlos Pons Guerra – nicknamed ‘the Pedro Almodovar of dance’ by the BBC – is giving the UK premiere of his latest work, a dance adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II, at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre on 30 & 31 October.

Christopher Marlowe’s 1592 play tells the true story of the King of England who fell in love with his male court favourite, Piers Gaveston. Their love led to a chase across England and a civil war before the pair finally met their tragic end.

Aged 17, Pons Guerra ran away to Leeds from his home in the Canaries to follow his dream of becoming a dancer. Homophobia and machismo – boys didn’t dance where he came from – drove his move to Yorkshire where he trained at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance and eventually founded his company in 2012.

His experience of homophobic bullying is what inspired him to set Edward II in the only place scarier than the medieval court of England – high school. His fever dream interpretation tells the story of the King of the Class, the boy he loves and the war that tears the playground apart. Hormone-fuelled, spectacularly camp and aggressively poignant, Pons Guerra’s Edward II explores the pain and joys of forbidden love – and the struggle and endurance of queer people across history.

Carlos Pons Guerra says: “: “I moved to Leeds over twenty years ago; I lied to my parents to leave behind what felt like a very scary world for a young gay man. In Leeds, I achieved my dream of becoming a dancer and choreographer, and now I get to tell stories like mine around the world. So, it feels like a strange full circle to tell the important story of Edward II by returning to the reason that brought me to Leeds – a horrible experience in high school! I’m glad that we finally get to premiere a show ‘at home’, which is what Leeds and the Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre feel like to me.”

Pons Guerra’s Edward II is set to an original score that glitches from 90s video arcade to medieval electronics by Pons Guerra’s regular collaborator, Spanish MAX Award Winner, Luis Miguel Cobo. Time-warping costume designs and set design are by April Dalton. Lighting is by Barnaby Booth. World experts on Marlowe and the Renaissance from the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York have worked as consultants on the show.

The piece is danced by a cast of five international dancers: Will English (Club Guy and Roni) as Edward II; Mariano Zamora (Studio Wayne McGregor and Ballet Hispanico of New York) as Piers Gaveston; Tahlia Russell (Lewis Major Projects) as Queen Isabella, Edward’s wife; Ruby Portus (former Sadler’s Wells Young Associate) as Mortimer Junior, Isabella’s lover; and Sebastien Kapps (Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures) as Lightborne, Edward’s assassin.

Edward II was rarely performed in England until the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the 1960s. Most historians and academics had until then ignored the play, in part because of how it portrays a queer monarch, and the relationship between Edward and Gaveston was largely described as a close friendship. Pons Guerra’s Edward II is only the second dance adaptation following David Bintley’s version for Stuttgart Ballet in 1995 which then entered the repertoire of Birmingham Royal Ballet. It is also only the second dance adaptation of any of Marlowe’s works.