Robert Carter as Olga Supphozova in Paquita






Paul Ghiselein as Ida Nevasayneva in the Dying Swan

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo - Peacock - March 2006
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all images © John Ross

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The Grand Pas de Quatre, spoofing the real performance by the four great Romantic ballerinas of the day (Grisi, Taglioni, Grahn and Cerrito)at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, was also hilarious. Paquita is the opportunity for the dancers to really strutt their stuff. The Dying Swan and Tarantella were recently seen in London at the Plisetskaya gala; I'm glad I saw that first, otherwise I would have been giggling throughout those pieces had I seen the Trocks' versions first! However, as someone said elsewhere, even during the gala I was expecting the swan to start shedding feathers all over the stage!

I strongly recommend this delightful evening for all those who love ballet and who have a sense of humour, or who just want a good laugh at the same time as admiring good artistry.

The Tarantella was played with more panache and bravura than most of the Balanchine dancing we are shown in London and whilst I am sure it would not quite pass the scrutiny of the Balanchine Trust, it proves what phenomenal dancers these men really are.

And Paquita to finish with ballerinas who wink at the audience and seem to say "I'll show you just how to do a perfect series of fouetees." So perfect in fact I am going again tonight!

"it is slightly tired humour for the sophisticate" – The Stage

"the audience - a mix of rouged-up elderly balletomanes and fringe-show aficionados" - Daily Telegraph

I'm *so* glad I'm not, nor ever shall be, a sophisticate, then . Mind you, I can't see where I fit in the Telegraph's description, either. I suppose I could go and buy some rouge ...

BTW, the Telegraph refers to the other bill as containing some contemporary dance. Does anyone know more?

Yes...I too was wondering where I fit into that audience as I read those silly comments! I haven't been to a fringe show for at least 20 years, I don't use rouge and, at 46, don't think I qualify as 'elderly' yet (although I feel it sometimes!!). I thought I might have some degree of sophistication, but since I found the Trocks very funny I guess that illusion has been dashed as well.

Programme 2 will consist of Les Sylphides, a mystery pas de deux, Go for Barocco, Dying Swan and Raymonda's Wedding. I don't quite get how that can be called a 'contemporary' programme. 'Barocco' is based on Balanchine, the mystery pdd might be something contemporary, so that makes one or two pieces out of five 'contemporary'...and is Balanchine considered 'contemporary'??

Whilst mulling over this question, I am off to buy some rouge and get a blue rinse in preparation for my next trip to the Trocks on Tuesday...

I don't think the object is to laugh at ballet. I think it's the ability to see humor for what it is - humor. Good humor is usually based upon a foundation of truth - in this case ballet technique. Ballet is just the vehicle used to laugh at ourselves.

What can be wrong with that? Who's to say that a swan whilst dying doesn't molt a few feathers?

The ‘Trocks’ key to success is that they manage to satirize ballet in a completely inoffensive and affectionate way. Their ‘Programme One’ at the Peacock Theatre has the huge benefit of Swan Lake Act II, which steals the show. Siegfried’s weary melodrama but impeccable technique lovingly pokes fun at the effeminate danseur noble who tries in vain to appear overtly masculine, while Odette effortlessly pulls of grand jetes and fouttes, all the while retaining the obvious yet subtly thought out comic edge. ‘She’ combined real grace with highly witty acting, while the cygnets’ trouble with the coordination of their dance must have rung true with a few members of the audience including myself!

Rothbart’s huge wig and laps of the stage effectively parody the ‘real thing’, and as he swished his cloak around the audience unsurprisingly collapsed into giggles – the perils of costumes! The corps de ballet play no small part in the proceedings, with Petipa’s choreography shining through but reworked to huge comic effect. I loved the part where the swans went about pecking and pruning in between the set pieces performed with mock-seriousness; such a straightforward idea but laugh-out-loud funny. The comedy is nicely punctuated by some classy dancing, notably in the principal variations.

The Tarantella toned down the comedy, and I got the feeling that most of the slips and slides weren’t actually meant to be there. The use of the tambourine provided most of the comedy, with the dancers flirtatiously banging it on their hips, their feet and on each other. The Pas de Quatre dragged on slightly, with there being one or two running gags and no narrative to carry the slapstick along. The Trocks’ immensely popular rendition of The Dying Swan (with the cast-change announcer proudly having stated that ‘The Dying Swan, tonight, will be…executed by…’) was greeted with cheers, and the moulting tutu was as funny and clever as ever.

Paquita, in all its showy glamour, was well danced with nice touches like one dancer appearing wearing glasses, and the occasional triumphant punches in the air after executing difficult turns. It’s satisfying that they can pop in a few double tours too! For me, the defining moment of their Paquita was in the second variation, when ‘Gerd Tõrd’ relied on the assistance of a fellow dancer to hoist her leg up as far as it would go, a pertinent comment on the nature of today’s aspiring dancers.

The company unashamedly declares its love for ballet as well as its love for cross-dressing, and the programme’s assertion that it regularly performs at AIDS charity benefits is both unsurprising and heart-warming. The ideas behind the comedy are consistent, and the whole show makes me want to sit in on a rehearsal, to see how the end result actually comes about. They are tirelessly enthusiastic and a real asset to the sometimes over-serious ballet world, and the standing ovation they received is testimony to that.

The Peacock Theatre, London, 28th March 2006

I have long had a fondness for men in drag – I take it back to a balmy spring afternoon of childhood yore when I first discovered my grandmother’s jewellery box (and my mother looked on aghast) – and of course I adore Classical Ballet, so, like a pilgrim to Canterbury (or, rather like a drag queen to the stage) I travelled to the Peacock Theatre in Holborn, which, until 8th April, plays host to their Imperial Highnesses, the Prima Ballerinas of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo.

In this wonderful company’s second programme we traverse a vast landscape of balletic style and technique. We begin in the Romantic dream-world of Fokine’s evocation of the ballet blanc, Les Sylphides, created on his muses Pavlova, Karsarvina and Njinsky. The poet, Stanislas Kokitch, wanders through the moonlit glade conjuring up an opiate-induced fantasy of ballerinas in white tulle, deliriously unaware and absolutely vacant of manner. His Romantic vision, with whom he engages (but seems never to engage) is Margeaux Mundyen, possessed of a miraculously lyrical style (beautifully recalling the poetry of Pavlova’s dancing) in spite of her elephantine size. She has a meltingly lovely back, soft and willowy arms and the gentlest of expressions, yet when she jumps the tremors are felt for miles and lower and lower go the legs of the girls in the corps.

There is more of Fokine’s choreography for Pavlova in The Dying Swan, which is a great joke improving with each telling. Ida Nevasayneva has relaxed her (iron) grip on the role and this time it was danced by Lariska Dumbchenko, deliciously curdling the cream of the Fokine choreography until she falls victim to an off-stage gunshot (perhaps it is the jealous Miss Nevasayneva) – first goes a wing, then goes a leg but never, ever, goes the wondrously narcissistic egotism.

But there is more to the company than slap-stick humour, for great comedy is much more than that. From Aristophanes upwards we see comedy as a manipulation of the highest of art forms. Thus when Anna Russell used to parody Wagner’s Ring Cycle, she did so with the greatest of Wagnerian techniques and when Les Dawson used to mangle Chopin’s Preludes, he did so with an absolute technical command of the instrument. So we see in these ballerinas (and their cavaliers) peerless artistry and total integrity. It is no surprise perhaps that on the same evening as the Bolshoi Ballet opened in Birmingham we could also see perfect Bolshoi bravura technique from (the artist formerly known as) Prince Myshkin in The Flames of Paris Pas de Deux, executing the barrel turns as perfectly as we have seen in the video clips of Lavrovsky or Vasiliev and when the company dances the Raymonda Act 3 they do so perfect in step, if somewhat bawdy in manner, most especially the glorious Olga Supphozova. And there she is again in the marvellous Go for Barocco, set to the Bach Double Violin Concerto and a brilliant parody of Balanchine – figures which wind in and out of each other, tangling and (somehow) untangling up. It fizzes in shape and movement; it is cool, clean and cries out “That’s New York, Baby!”

This is not just a fabulous evening of Travesti, but a stupendous evening of Classical dance and a stunning evening of theatre. We are amused, we are amazed and I am wondering – whatever did happen to Granny’s jewellery box?

Edited to add that I can see from the Wells' website that I'm by no means the first to notice this, either - quite a few seats have gone already.

Thanks for this Alison, it was reading the postings here that encouraged me to see them 2 weeks ago, and I became their latest fan, so have booked again for September!

There's so much online booking to be done at the moment it's insane, the Coliseum Kirov, Friends's Bolshoi in 2 weeks, and then the Friend's period 1 booking 2 weeks later on May 9.

Yakatarina Verbosovich, marvellous especially in The Flames of Paris - how close to the stage do you need to be sitting *not* to be taken in by Chase Johnsey?! (Near enough to pick up some useful makeup tips on how to use several shades of turquoise eyeshadow at once, certainly)

Noticed some very lightly blocked pointe shoes being used in the Pas de Quatre: authentic for the period, certainly, but must be very painful when being used to support however-many stone of male. How dancers suffer for their art!

Some great performances throughout, as usual, (I think it was Lariska Dumbchenko - the Trocks' website isn't helpful about searching their alter egos - danced Odette's solo in Swan Lake almost straight) but the standout for me at Saturday's matinee was Olga Supphozova (aka Robert Carter). First of all as the Dying Swan - beautiful arms and shoulders - I think she danced it 'straighter' than others I've seen, almost making me think there must be some comic mileage in dancing it virtually straight as a ballerina trying to maintain her dignity while everything around her goes pear-shaped, and then later as the lead in Paquita, where her entire upper body embodied everything that a ballerina should be - and those fouettés! I actually found that my eyes had unexpectedly filled with tears at the end of her solo. 'She' may be a 'he' in reality, but there are dancers in ballet companies in this country who could learn a lot by watching her.

A former dancer who's a friend of mine, having previously resisted going because, as someone else indicated above, she wasn't sure she'd like her art being messed around with, went and totally loved it! She said that half the mishaps on stage had either happened to her or to people she knew, and she was very impressed by their technical prowess. I think she's completely converted ...

Please don't leave it another 5 years before you come back, guys!