Broken Wings is a one-act ballet dramatising the life of Frida Kahlo, made in 2016 by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa for English National Ballet as part of a triple bill of work by female choreographers, She Said, curated by then-artistic director Tamara Rojo. Rojo herself danced Kahlo at the premiere opposite Irek Mukhamedov as Diego Rivera, with dramaturgy by Nancy Meckler and designs by Dieuweke van Reij built around Kahlo's own self-portraiture.
What is danced
The article does not describe the choreography in technical terms — no step names, holds, or set-piece breakdowns survive in the source. What it does give is Lopez Ochoa's own account of intent: she wanted the piece to 'tell the basic facts of Kahlo's life before letting her choreography loose into a more abstract, surreal treatment,' which points to a work that moves from biographical narrative into a more expressionistic, non-literal dance language, but the article stops short of naming any technique or vocabulary for that shift.
Casting and costume choices carry some of the physical characterisation. Rojo was cast as Kahlo specifically as a 'petite, Hispanic dancer,' and Mukhamedov was chosen as Rivera at 56 because he was 'old enough' but 'fit enough' — implying a role built around presence, weight and partnering rather than virtuosic display, reinforced by the fact that Rivera's dancer performs in a fat suit. Kahlo's principal costume is modelled on her 1944 self-portrait The Broken Column, which (on the historical record of that painting, not stated in the article) depicts her body bound in a surgical corset and pierced by a shattered classical column — suggesting the costume itself shapes or restricts the dancer's line, though the article does not confirm this.
Because no synopsis, scene list, or musical-number breakdown is given, I cannot responsibly assign section-level or whole-work style codes here: doing so would mean inferring steps from a choreographer's stated intent and a costume description, which is exactly the kind of guess this catalogue is trying to avoid.
Context
The piece arrived amid a documented push, under Tamara Rojo's direction, to get women choreographing for a major ballet company: She Said (2016) was explicitly billed as an all-female choreographer triple bill, and Rojo said she had never before danced in a work made by a woman. That institutional context — a principal ballerina using her own programming power to commission a peer, then dancing the lead herself — is itself part of why this work is notable, independent of its content.
Staging history
Broken Wings was revived by English National Ballet in 2019 for a second all-female bill, She Persisted, with Katja Khaniukova succeeding Rojo as Kahlo and Mukhamedov reprising Rivera. An excerpt was performed at a gala in Guadalajara, Mexico later that year with Rojo and Yuri Possokhov, 'La Llorona' sung live by Geo Meneses. In 2020 ENB streamed a film of the original Rojo/Mukhamedov run in response to pandemic closures. Separately, Lopez Ochoa expanded the material into a full three-act ballet, Frida, for Dutch National Ballet, premiering 6 February 2020 with Maia Makhateli and James Stout; that version retained 25 minutes and revised 13 minutes of Broken Wings' choreography, added new music by the same composer plus two further songs, and kept the same dramaturg and designer.
How to watch it
Because the article frames the piece as moving from biographical fact into 'abstract, surreal treatment,' watch for a shift in register partway through — literal storytelling giving way to something less narrative. Pay attention to how Rivera's dancer is physicalised through the fat suit rather than through virtuosity, and to whether Kahlo's costume, modelled on The Broken Column, visibly constrains or shapes her partnering and line.