UK Theatre Network

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

King’s Theatre, Glasgow

Tuesday 8 March 2011

There’s a real buzz in the auditorium: many in the audience already know and love the Trocks. There’s an announcement before the show: ’All the ballerinas are in a very good mood tonight.’

The Trocks are a 16 strong company of professional male dancers, founded in 1974 to bring a playful, entertaining view of classical ballet to the widest possible audience. Starting in a loft in New York, they have since become a global dance phenomenon. Incorporating the full range of ballet and modern dance in their repertoire, they cock a snook at the absurd and ossified conventions of classical ballet, whilst gleefully celebrating its lyricism, its passion and its athletic aesthetic. The fact that the male dancers play all the roles, often in enormous size 12 pointe shoes, is a joy, and the overtly hairy chest of Odette in their signature piece, Act 2 of Swan Lake, adds to the hilarity of the evening without taking away from the exhileration of seeing some of the most graceful ballerinas ever. Pratfalls and gestures taken straight from Melodrama. Music Hall and early silent movies add to the tropes of transgression that are the dynamic of an evening that also includes straightforwardly beautiful dancing in the Pas de Deux Grand Classique. Their take on Balanchine, Go for Barocco, was a stunningly funny precision piece to the music of Bach, his elegance expressed through a group of what appeared to be competitive muscular 1930s bathing belles. And The Dying Swan was executed in a cloud of moulting feathers, and bows that lasted longer than the piece itself. The final dance, Raymonda’s Wedding, takes a typically ludicrous fantasy ballet narrative and comically violates it as really really large ‘female’ dancers are partnered with short ‘male’ dancers who can’t even see round them as they work together, and ‘accidents’ contravene the idea of grace: the Prince collides painfully with the prosc arch and a ballerina reappears from the wings with heavy black rimmed glasses on.

In ballet, dancers normally ignore the audience until the curtain calls…here the company engage with you from the start and you are genuinely invited to share the joke (or the joy) with them. They are dancing in travesti – not in drag – challenging the gender and race – and size – assigned stereotyping decisions that underlie normal ballet school and ballet troupe practice.

They have an awareness of the performance of personality, underlined by being gay in a world where assigned gender is a political as well as a corporal axiom, where the gay body has been the subject of exploration in performance art, and in the lives of gay men, predicated on a division of the self externally imposed. This lived reality chimes with the creation of glamorous names for classical ballerinas: the Trocks revel in dual Russian personae, male and female: punned pseudonyms such as Ida Nevasayneva and Mikhail Mypansarov.

They are all extremely accomplished and talented ballet dancers – with great comic timing and real rapport with the audience. It’s their love for the great traditions of Russian Imperial Ballet that enables them to work to such comic effect, producing both affection and respect. Even the final Curtain Call became a parody – of the grotesque inexpressivity of River Dance.

At the end of the show, you couldn’t imagine an audience all being in more of a good mood: when the Trocks are in town, it’s very much like being invited to the best party ever.

Susan C. Triesman

Listings Info:

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

Tue 8^th and Wed 9^th March

Tickets: £14 – £27

Box Office 08448 717 648 (Bkg fee)

www.ambassadortickets.com/glasgow (bkg fee)

The UK tour goes on to:

New Wimbledon Theatre

Fri 11 and Sat 12 March

Brighton Dome Concert Hall

Tue 15 and Wed 16 Mar

Nottingham, Royal Concert Hall

Fri 18 and Sat 19 March

Milton Keynes Theatre

Tues 22 and Wed 23 March

High Wycombe, Wycombe Swan

Fri 25 and Sat 26 March

Birmingham Hippodrome

Wed 30 March 0- Sat 2 April

Sheffield, Lyceum Theatre

Tue 5 and Wed 6 April

Bradford, Alhambra Theatre

Fri 8 and Sat 9 April

Edinburgh Festival Theatre

Tues 12 and We 13 Apr

Salford, The Lowry

Fri 15 and Sat 16 Apr

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo –

Theatre Royal, Glasgow (17^th – 18^th Feb, 2009)

The “Trocks” jeté onto the Glasgow stage with a hugely entertaining look at ballet albeit from a very different perspective.

For those who have never heard of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, this is an all male ballet corps, who perform both the male and female roles in traditional and contemporary ballet pieces. This includes their now famous version of Act 2 of Swan Lake. For those traditionalists who think that they couldn’t watch Odette without seeing her “en pointe”, never fear, these extremely talented danceurs fully take on their role as ballerinas and that includes dancing en pointe. However, the dancing is only one part of this interpretation, and the comedy that comes from the dancers exaggeration of styles, and their displays of “prima ballerina” behaviours is equally as important. The facial expressions, aided by the unsubtle make-up, are themselves hysterically funny, and also tightly choreographed.

The comedy and dance came together beautifully, typified by the exceptional Grand Pas De Quatre, featuring Camilo Rodriguez, Claude Gamba, Christopher Lam and Joseph Jeffries. Each representing a famous ballerina from the original Le Grand Pas de Quatre, they brought the offstage rivalries onstage and gave a thoroughly deceptively comic performance. I say deceptive, not to describe the comedy, but to describe the talented dancing. You easily forget the skill required to perform many of these routines, and that it not only needs a talented dancer, but a “performer” to retain the energy in what could easily have been a one-gag show.

The simple sets, using only a backcloth, help to show off the far more elaborate costumes. The swans looked simply beautiful, even with the odd hairy chest amongst the troupe. I would also urge any audience member to purchase a programme for this show. Not only does it have lots of information on each of the cast members, but the continuation of the humour throughout helps to carry this show all the way home with you.

Catch the Trocks before they take flight from the UK in March. Tour details are listed below.

Performances:

17-18^th Feb            Glasgow, Theatre Royal            www.theatreroyalglasgow.com

20-21^st Feb            Edinburgh, Festival Theatre            www.eft.co.uk

23^rd Feb            Nottingham, Playhouse            www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk

26-28^th Feb            Newcastle, Theatre Royal            www.theatreroyal.co.uk

3-4^th Mar            Milton Keynes Theatre            www.miltonkeynestheatre.com

6-7^th Mar            Salford, The Lowry                   www.thelowry.com

10-11^th Mar            Woking, New Victoria            www.theambassadors.com/newvictoria

13-14^th Mar            Wycombe, Swan                      www.wycombeswan.co.uk