Les Ballet Trockaderos de Monte Carlo, January 29, 2005, Jones Hall

Take great love for ballet, intimate knowledge of its history, artistic achievement, and men in pointe shoes and tutus, and you get Les Ballet Trockaderos de Monte Carlo. This all-male troupe performs classical ballet with a twist. It's real ballet, but it's also really funny! The company identity plays on the grand traditions of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, a company founded in 1909 by the great dancer Sergei Diaghilev and known for a time as Les Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo. This is the company that first brought great Russian ballet (and ballerinas) to Western Europe. The performances of the Trocks pay homage to this classical tradition. The program started with what is, according to the program, the signature work of the company, Act II from Swan Lake. (For those of you unfamiliar with the ballet, this is the act where Prince Siegfried finds and falls in love with the Swan Queen, Odette.) Svetlana Lofatkina (Fernando Medina Gallego), who played Odette, was my favorite dancer of the night. He let us know right from the beginning that he meant business with a solid balance of a releve arabesque. Wow - seeing any ballerina doing that would be amazing, but it's doubly amazing from a man since pointe technique has developed to suit the female physique. His "white swan" solo was equally impressive. The essence of Trock performances can best be called "campy." The dancers take ballet and exaggerate its idiosyncrasies. Take for instance the entrance of the corps de ballet in Swan Lake. Now, bourrees are beautiful and elegant, but set 8 men bourreeing (sp?) across the stage, looking like their next steps will land them flat on their faces, and you get comedy. Another Trock characteristic is expressing what is undeniably the inner monologue of dancers: the urge to waive at a friend on the other side of the stage, or to let out a big "Yes!" when you nail a turn. Odette ends up being partnered by Benno, the prince's friend, who was a little height-challenged. The second time Benno fumbled Odette, as much as dropping her on her tutu, she turned to him and held up two fingers with a look that said, "That was twice. Don't let there be a third time." The program also included a pas de deux that is apparently decided somewhat last-minute, as it appears in the program only as "Pas de Deux or Solo." The dancers performed a lively tarantella announced to be "in the style of Balanchine." You just don't see tambourines on stage enough anymore. The pas de deux was followed by La Vivandiere, a dance originally presented in 1844. The big joke here was that the leading lady was about 6 foot 4, while the leading man was about 4 foot 6. There was one absolutely hilarious point where the man promenades the woman, who's in arabesque, by going under her leg. Predictably, he ended up on her knee at the end of the dance rather than the other way around. This second section of the performance was rounded out by The Dying Swan, a solo originally choreographed for Anna Pavlova in 1905 to music by Saint-Saens. This was performed admirably and with much molting by Ida Nevasayneva. (Now seems a good time to point out that the performers all have two fake Russian stage names, one for when they perform male roles, and one for female roles. There are several members of the Legupski family in the show, as well as Yakaterina Verbosovich and Doris Vadanya.) Chances are that with all the feathers, the fact that Ida stayed on pointe for almost the entire dance went unnoticed by most. The third act consisted of excerpts from Raymonda, which according to the program "has baffled audiences since its premiere at the Maryinsky (then Kirov, now Maryinsky) Theater in 1898." This act contained the most serious dancing of the night, including 5 solos. Ms. Lofatkina did a lovely solo that concluded with strong pique turns en manage. Olga Supphozova shone in her solo, brilliant and precise. Lariska Dumbchenko took a brief break in her solo as Raymonda to talk on the phone (brought on stage by her leading man) - but she didn't come off pointe for it. The show concluded, as all good ballets do, with a resounding finale that made me wonder where the dancers found the energy. One final treat was an encore after the curtain call spoofing Riverdance - doubly hilarious because the dancers were in tutus and pointe shoes. I haven't laughed this hard at a ballet performance in... well, I've never actually laughed this hard at a ballet performance. It was fabulous, darling.