Tuesday, August 19, 2008

review form Seven Telegraph UK
























It's my turn to be Margot

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 05/03/2006
They are ballerinas as you've never seen them before - with hairy chests and five o'clock shadow. Just don't go calling the Trocks a drag act, writes Louise Levene
It isn't exactly a man's life in the ballet. Even supposing you're tall enough and handsome enough (

Tuesday, May 27, 2008
By JENNIFER DUNNING
Published: August 16, 2002
One of the indisputable charms of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is the way this all-male troupe plunges the viewer back into the glory days of ballet. The dear old stars would be left in the dust if forced to compete technically with the dancers of today. But they had an allure that is largely missing now. And the Trocks, as they are affectionately known, brought back that perfume on Wednesday night in the company's second program at the Joyce Theater.
The centerpiece of the evening was ''La Trovatiara Pas de Cinq,'' a divertissement reportedly unearthed by Peter Anastos from a lost opera by Verdi. May Mr. Anastos, an early Trock creating his first piece for the company since 1976, have a long history in discovering fake antiquities. The quintet is a little jewel. It is also long on dancing and short on the kind of exaggerated pratfalls that occasionally dull the gleam of a Trocks performance.
''Trovatiara'' takes place on a dock in Tripoli, where three ravishing ''pirate girls'' have been commanded to perform for the cruel emir, Saddam el-Djaloppy. The ballerina Nadia Rombova (danced by Jai Williams) needed to be coaxed by the other four dancers before she took center stage. But once she did, Ms. Rombova was a model of gracious pyrotechnics, with a regal, wryly incandescent Jessye Norman smile.
Her pretty sidekicks, each of whom had a chance to shine, were the effervescent Gerd Törd (Bernd Burgmaier) and Sveltiana Lofatkina (Fernando Medina Gallego), who earlier in the evening established herself as one of the few modern-day ballerinas to look capable of a true renversé turn. Two pint-size bodyguards, danced by Nikolai Legupski (Carlos Garcia) and Igor Slowpokin (Manolo Molina), added to the period flavor in sporadic dueling with flashing rubber scimitars.
That old ballet chestnut ''Le Corsaire'' appears to have been the most likely model for this lost quintet. But there is something of Michel Fokine's ''Scheherazade'' here, too, in part because of the Diaghilevian flavor of Kenneth Busbin's exquisite costumes and Kip Marsh's décor and lighting.
The lavish, increasingly virtuosic dancing of the Trocks is a great joy, in large part because of its seamless blend of old-time ballet manners and modern technique. The dancers do not need to do anything but dance. An ebullient running slide onto a banana peel is just as funny as a catastrophic slip and fall, and much more exciting. The Trocks had the audience cheering throughout ''Pas de Trois des Odalisques,'' an excerpt from ''Le Corsaire,'' and ''Paquita,'' staged by Elena Kunikova.
The extraordinary performing of Olga Supphozova (Robert Carter), who danced the third variation in ''Odalisques'' and starred in ''Paquita,'' was a highlight of the evening. Ms. Supphozova's fouettés and multiple turns in ''Odalisques'' would have looked dazzling in any first-rank ballet company's performance. But Ms. Supphozova's impressive technical skills are made even more exciting and poignant by the fact that she is played by a man who obviously loves and reveres the tradition of the prima ballerina and becomes one, for all the teasing, when he dances.
The other lead ballerinas in ''Paquita'' were Ms. Rombova, the virtuosic little Sylphia Belchick (Mr. Garcia), Maria Paranova (Raymell Jamison) and Fifi Barkova (Mr. Molina), an adorable chickadee for whom the French endearment mignonne must have been coined. Ms. Supphozova was partnered by Vassisdas Pinski (Jason Hadley), a comically innocent-looking lad with a roving eye. The fine lead cast of ''Odalisques'' was completed by the amiable Lariska Dumbchenko (Raffaele Morra) and Colette Adae (Mr. Hadley).
Ms. Dumbchenko chewed gum throughout ''Les Sylphides,'' staged for the company by Alexandre Minz. That and other bits of too-low humor nearly sank the ballet, despite some good dancing. One chugging run into the wings is funny. Three are not. Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure) was the implacable lead ballerina, partnered by an oblivious cavalier (Mr. Jamison) with Nureyev-style beestung lips. The lead cast was completed by Ms. Lofatkina and Ms. Supphozova.




Las Vegas Review-Journal


Margeaux Mundeyn, originally a dresser to a great
ballerina, began her career when, one night, she
locked her mistress in the armoire and danced in her
place. Although hailed by critics for her wonderful
technique, she fooled no one. She was immediately
sought after by companies and impresarios alike,
but decided instead to spend some time on her
acting. Now she is both a technical and a dramatic
ballerina. The whereabouts of her former mistress
are not known.




Les Ballets Trockadero delivers expected comedy
January 28, 2003
by JULIA OSBORNE
There's nothing particularly outrageous about a performance of "Swan Lake" featuring dancers in tights, tutus and toe shoes. Yet when it's performed by the Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, things are rarely as they seem.
The fine and often funny moves of the cross-dressing dancers made for a silly and satisfying evening for the nearly sell-out crowd at Artemus Ham Hall at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Saturday.
Two selections from "Swan Lake" were featured in a program that also included several more contemporary works.
The company, formed in 1974 with early performances past prime time in off-off Broadway settings, dances with tongues firmly in cheek. At the same time, all are classically trained and have spent time in other companies, from the Metropolitan Opera Ballet to Los Angeles Classic Ballet. Jai Williams, one of the featured performers Saturday, danced with Las Vegas' Nevada Dance Theatre (now Nevada Ballet Theatre) before joining the Trockadero troupe in 1994.
As part of the fun, the program lists fictitious Russian dancers, complete with fanciful biographies.
The primary problem of the performance occurs just because the dancers are good. So much of the time onstage is over-the-top: a dying swan that sheds a flurry of feathers with each step, a male principal who can't quite cope with a prima ballerina's lifts and has to call for assistance. Yet there are passages that -- once you get beyond the fact that those are males, not females, dancing on point -- are simply fine, classical ballet. It's not bad, but it's not why the audience came.
Another minor concern was that one of the dances is already designed to be a comical piece. "Yes, Virginia, Another Piano Ballet" was performed by the Nevada Ballet Theatre in the past couple of years, and there it was extra amusing to see veterans being silly. Here, it was also funny, but it didn't require any different moves from what are typically choreographed.
This stop was the second of the Trockadero 2003 season, which will see them dancing throughout the United States, as well as making a stop in Guatemala in February and spending six weeks in Japan this summer.
The company last performed here in March 2000, and was asked to return because of its popularity.
The evening opened with the second act of "Swan Lake," with tall, lanky Williams as Odette. Dramatic in white tights and tutu, his dazzling smile and blue eye shadow could have been seen in the last row. He spent much time on point, punctuated with more than one series of lavish pirouettes. The six swans had many skills and many silly moves, too. They included pratfalls and a section where swans did what swans may do: ticking their heads and grooming their wings. Physically, few resembled ballerinas. One reminded of the late John Belushi if he had taken a turn as a dancer.
Some Trockadero dancers do take the parts of males, including three in this selection who provide noble support to the swans. Males as males do not always take second seat to the other dancers, including Grant Thomas and Yonny Manaure in "Piano Ballet," each given time for a fine solo.
The evening concluded with "Stars and Stripes Forever," a nod to a '50s patriotic piece that was first danced by the New York City Ballet, with the company in a sparkle of red, white and blue sequins and bright and white tutus. It was lighthearted, yet appropriate -- and proved that it is possible to dance on point to a march.
REVIEWWhat: Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo When: Saturday Where: University of Nevada, Las VegasGrade: B













Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo Dance Company
News, Reviews & Features
Feature: The New Yorker (New York, NY)
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
by JOAN ACOCELLAThe Trocks.Issue of 01-10-2005Posted 01-03-2005
The Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, a travesty troupe, with men darting about on point as sylphs and odalisques, made its début in 1974 in a loft on Fourteenth Street managed by the West Side Discussion Group, a homophile organization. The stage was a twelve-by-twelve piece of plywood; the audience sat on folding chairs. “The place was on the second floor, and the stairs were steep,” says Eugene McDougle, an archeologist who lost his heart to that show and has been the general director of the company ever since. “The Fire Department could have closed us down.” So could the ballet authorities. With a cast of ten, the show had only two men who could actually do classical dancing. That first season lasted two weekends. Today, the Trocks, as they are known, work forty weeks a year. They are a sensation, and a staple. Has success spoiled them? I don’t know—I wasn’t there in 1974—but when, last month at the Joyce, I watched the opening night of their thirtieth-anniversary season, I thought, These people are delivering more bang for the buck than most other classical companies in America.
The Trocks’ business is comedy, and the basic joke, of course, is that men are dancing women’s roles. Just to see those size-10 point shoes, those yawning armpits, that chest hair peeping up over the bodices—I do not mention what greets you when the ballerina turns and her skirts fly up—is to laugh. Then, there are what you could call the vaudeville gags, excellent ones. (The cavalier and his lady, their dance completed, exit demurely; a moment later, you hear a crash and a scream from the wings.) At a higher level are the jokes specifically about ballet. Have you ever wondered, while watching Michel Fokine’s “Les Sylphides,” what those dainty, fingery, seeming-to-listen or seeming-to-whisper hand gestures are about? Well, so have the Trocks, and when, in their version of “Sylphides,” Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure) goes into this business, the corps dancers look at her as if she were mad. Has the so-called Poet, the only man onstage amid the wood sprites, ever seemed to you unusual? Why does he look so abstracted? Has he risen from the dead? Pavel Törd (Bernd Burgmaier), who played the Poet on opening night, had the same questions, and no answer. He padded about, in an ill-fitting blond wig, with his eyes fixed on—what? The auditorium’s exit sign? At one point, with great eloquence, he simply stood there and rotated his wrists so that his palms faced us. “Why am I here?” he seemed to say. “Why are all these fairies running around, hurling themselves at me?”





Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
'Le Lac des Cygnes,' 'Nutcracker' pas de deux, 'Go for Barocco,' 'Tarantella,' 'Dying Swan,' 'L’Ecole de Ballet'
By Kate Snedeker
November 17, 2003 -- Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
Now celebrating it's 30th delightfully unusual season, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo swept into Edinburgh with a combination of humor, camp, drama, and oh yes, some pretty good ballet. From a mugging Odette to a feather-trailing dying swan, these men in tutus made it clear that talent on one's toes isn't limited to ladies. The program included a range of classical, modern and utterly unique ballets. Opening the evening, was "Le Lac Des Cygnes," a decidedly unique look at Act II of Lev Ivanov’s classic "Swan Lake." The Trocks New York roots were apparent in Olga Supphozova’s (Robert Carter) mugging, big-biceped Odette, a swan who clearly would have been just as at home in a Harlem street corner as by the enchanted lake. She grinned, she flirted, she flexed and she showed off impressive fluidity and speedy fouettes. Nicholas Khachafallenjar (Jai Williams) was her earnest, long-suffering Siegfried, and proved a solid partner. R.M. “Prince” Myshkin (Fernando Medina Gallego) was a scene stealing Benno and Velour Pilleaux (Paul Ghiselin) was a hyperkinetic Von Rothbart with distinct resemblance to the once popular troll dolls. The swan corps had just the right mix of camp, balletic talent and well-rehearsed, but un-rehearsed appearing pratfalls.
The "Nutcracker" Pas de Deux (which appeared to be a variation on George Balanchine’s choreography) was competently performed by Lariska Dumbchenko (Raffaele Morra) and Marat Legupski (Scott De Cola), but felt flat as it never found the right combination of seriousness and camp. Much more successful was “Go For Barocco” a “neo-new classic dance” and homage/parody of George Balanchine’s "Concerto Barocco." Peter Anastos’ choreography to the Bach’s music combined classic Trocks chaos with well blended flashes of "Concerto Barocco." The powerwalking ballerinas were led by the high-kicking Gerd Tord (Bernd Bergmaier) and Nadja Rambova (Jai Williams), with her noteworthy flexibility and controlled dancing.
A highlight of the night was "Tarantella," danced to a variation of Balanchine’s original choreography by Svetlana Lofatkina (Fernando Medina Gallego) and Vladimir Legupski (Lionel Droguet). Droguet was the most impressive of the men dancing as men, with a series of nicely executed pirouettes in second, that came down to passé and then back out into second several times. Gallego and Droguet brought a buoyant energy to the piece and were exceptional in their coordination of the steps with the beats on the tambourine. Gallego also proved an exceptional turner, with several doubles inserted in a long series of fouettes.
Ida Nevasayneva (Pail Ghiselin) finished off the act with her ultra dramatic, feather trailing "Dying Swan," with Fokine’s choreography set to Camille Saint Saens’ equally dramatic music. Her wobbly legged swan barely made it through the piece, but had plenty left for a set of humorous curtain calls.
The evening concluded with Peter Anastos’ "L’Ecole de Ballet," a two scene ballet about the the little ballerinas that didn’t make it into Degas’ paintings. Led by the matronly teacher, played by Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure), these pastel dress clad little not-so-darlings clumped, tripped and occasionally glided through their ballet classroom exercises. The various pratfalls and antics were apt demonstration of the great talent of the Trocks -- it’s hard to dance well, but even harder to add all the pratfalls and tricks in and still make it look natural. Joined by Kravlji Snepek’s (Hiroto Natori) eager, but tiny danseur, the budding ballerinas performed their individual variations and several rather elegant (at times, at least) pas de quatres. Natori’s partnering of the much larger Colette Adae (Jason Hadley) was very solid, with several elegantly executed supported pirouettes and smoothly executed pratfalls.
It was an evening of entertaining dance, with the just the right mix of serious dance and humor. And it ended, as only the Trocks can end, with a dozen budding ballerinas, a male student, their teacher and one resurrected dying swan Riverdancing in a cloud of stage smoke. Brava, Bravo!






On prancer, on dancerLes Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo bring valiant warhorses to gender-bent splendor in their Joyce holiday season.By SOPHIE ERNSTOffoffoff.comA company of lusty ballerinas flit, pirouette and occasionally mug through dusty, old warhorse ballets, like "Les Sylphide" and act two of "Swan Lake." But look closely: hairy chests peek out from behind sequined tutu tops, and those pointe shoes are awfully large. It's been thirty years since the boys of the Trocks, as their aficionados call them, took to the stage in ballet drag. And to much acclaim, then as now. With their silly stage names, both female and male (Ida Nevasayneva, Jacques d'Aniels) and even sillier fake bios, the Trocks could have become a dressed up gag group that aped ballerinas for laughs, a kind of S.N.L. of the dance world. Fortunately, they love ballet too much to do that. Instead, the Trocks are something of an interpretive repertory company, preserving and commenting — with a wryness mixed with appreciation — on everything from forgotten Petipa ballets from the nineteenth century to contemporary choreographers like George Balanchine and Pina Bauch. And it works.
It works because the Trocks can dance — and dance on pointe — not just convincingly, but well. The staged gaffes and jokes that intersperse and lighten the classic fare are rehearsed — and amusing — not just funny pratfalls, as when two sylphs collide in the beginning of "Les Sylphides." They stare accusingly at one another before waddling off and assuming angry, straight-armed arabesques.At the New Year's Eve performance at the Joyce, blonde-coiffed dynamo Olga Supphozova (Robert Carter) steals the spotlight in Michel Fokine's classic, "Les Sylphides," shooting across the stage and stopping on a dime, then flashing an ebullient smile worthy of a Black Sea diva. Long-suffering Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure) seems to mourn some tragic loss as she balances and pivots through a pas de deux with a vacant, droopy partner, the wonderful Pavel Tord (Bernd Burgmaier). Blond and lanky Tord wanders around the stage in a continual state of sleepwalking, rousing himself only to take in the brawny sylphs with an air of supreme disaffection.
Olga Supphozova flashes an ebullient smile worthy of a Black Sea diva.
In "Go for Barocco," a send-up of Balanchine's "Concerto Barocco," Nadja Rombova (Jai Williams) and Gerd Tord (Bernd Burgmaier in his female incarnation) sparkle as the leaders of a cast of six black leotard and skirt clad ballerinas. Peter Anastos' playful choreography both toys with and pays homage to Mr. B.'s signature quicksilver footwork and coquettish accents, which in this version morph into a brief spasm of all-out vogueing before the dancers collect themselves and return to neo-classical coolness.Two short divertissements prove fairly straightforward interpretations of the originals. Svetlana Lofatkina (Fernando Medina Gallego) and Vladimir Legupski (Lionel Droguet) perform a version of Balanchine's "Tarantella" with vigor and grace. Petipa's "Pas de Trois" showcases an excellent trio of ballerinas in green tutus, Olga Supphozova (Robert Carter), Colette Adae (Jason Hadley), and Lariska Dumbchenko (Raffaele Morra). In Fokine's famous "The Dying Swan," Ida Nevasayneva (Paul Ghiselin) grimaces as her tutu molts continually while she scuttles around to the tinkles of Camille Saint-Saens classic piece.
The mood suddenly shifts from highbrow ballet drama to cabaret drag fun.
The Trocks appear to delight in the possibilities of appreciative camp in the underwater scene from "The Humpback Horse," a restaging of part of a 'lost' Petipa ballet. Perhaps no other company today could get away with it. The plotless undersea vignette is complete with twin pink-tutued Star Fish, a Gold Fish, two Corals wearing clam-breasted tutus á la "The Little Mermaid," and two enigmatic characters, the Queen and the Genie of the Underwater. A chorus of seaweed-haired Medusas wave their arms for emphasis as the characters of the 'underwater' enact their courtly pageantry.This being New Year's Eve, a special, Rockette-style curtain call brings the show to a delicious close, as the dancers high-kick and march in Santa hats, reindeer horns and 2005 glasses. The mood suddenly shifts from highbrow ballet drama to cabaret drag fun.With their high level of technical skill, many Trocks are so convincing as ballerinas that you forget that they're men, until you remember. Which makes being a ballerina suddenly seem like an equal opportunity endeavor. If you don't have to be female then what is required? According to the Trocks, a pair of pointe shoes, a dash of lipstick and some chutzpah are all that's needed. And quite a few hours in the studio, too.

JANUARY 10, 2005OFFOFFOFF.COM • THE GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE NEW YORK

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NEW YORK A Joyce Theater Foundation Inc. presentation of an evening of dance in three acts performed by Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. Artistic director, Toby Dobrin. Opened, reviewed Aug. 17, 1998. Running time: 2 HOURS, 10 MIN. Cast: Yonny Manaure, Ken Busbin, Mark Rudzitis, Damien Thibodeaux, Paul Ghiselin, Robert Carter, Lev Radchenko, Manolo Molina, Bounsay Souravong, Jeremy Barney, Ramon Rivas, James Williams.
Twenty-four years after its founding members first rose on their toes to lovingly lampoon the stylistic conventions of classical ballet, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is still pirouetting across the globe to rapturous receptions. The all-male troupe, currently stopping in Gotham for a weeklong stand at the Joyce Theater, has become a cultural institution of sorts, and it's still clear why. They wed the physical capabilities of male dancers with the grace and grandeur of ballerinas, and blend them together with a layer of expert clowning. The result is an exaltation of the ballerina's otherworldly art that simultaneously brings it crashing down to earth.
The dancers' fantastical monikers alone are worth the price of admission. Featured in the opening segment of this week's program, the second act of "Swan Lake," were Mikolojus Vatissnyem (that's "what's-his-name" pronounced with a goulash-thick Slavic accent), Margeaux Mundeyn, Medulli Lobotomov and Mikhail Mypansarov, for instance.
The classic tale of the doomed love between a prince and a fey fowl is a Trockadero signature piece, and while their repertoire has been expanded adventurously over the years, their tongue-in-cheek deconstruction of this dance remains the supreme example of their style. That style relies on an accomplished execution of classical dance movements interlaced with little intrusions of reality. An expert series of pirouettes ends with a distinct look of nausea on the dancer's face, for example, and the stylized battle between the prince and the evil Von Rothbart for Odette descends into a veritable brawl.
It is indeed breathtaking to watch the corps of swans flutter onstage on point, but there's another kind of pleasure in seeing these girls throw off streams of sweat when they twirl, or wrench themselves through a turn when they lose momentum. Their carefully painted faces have the elastic expressiveness that real ballerinas are forbidden; they twist their lips into moues of envy or discomfort, and their smiles are just a little too ingratiating. Gracefulness and buffoonery are pleasurably mixed throughout the show.
A delightfully realized excerpt from "La Vivandiere" mined some of the evening's more robust laughs from the simple teaming of a pair of dancers in a pas de deux: the diminutive Igor Slowpokin (Manolo Molina) and the beaming giantess Svetlana Lofatkina (Lev Radchenko, a former Kirov Ballet dancer whose intense athleticism was exhilaratingly married with feminine grace). With Lofatkina on point, she towered a good four feet above her partner, who struggled valiantly to maintain his dignity.
Also new to New York was the solo turn by Ida Nevasayneva (Paul Ghiselin), an astonishing creature who danced a version of Anna Pavlova's "Dying Swan," with choreography "after" Michel Fokine. Rather far after, in fact, as Ida, who resembles a cross between Diana Vreeland and a bulimic flamingo, danced her way to doom with a combination of exquisite, rococo elegance and authentically birdlike awkwardness, obliviously hemorrhaging white feathers with each step.
The evening's final act was "Stars & Stripes Forever," choreographed by New York City Ballet principal dancer Robert La Fosse and inspired by George Balanchine's "Stars & Stripes." With glitzy drill-team style costumes by Mike Gonzales and plenty of high-stepping and saluting amid a swirl of red, white and blue, this was a display of patriotic pageantry that had a layer of politics beneath its sequined surface.
If you cared to, you could see the Trocks' affectionate nod to Americana as a big-hearted fanfare in the face of the right-wing politicians who are again making headlines by denouncing homosexuality as a threat to the American home and hearth. For although their appeal is well nigh universal, the art of the Ballets Trockadero is unquestionably rooted in a gay sensibility.
"They are our stars and our stripes, too," these performers seemed to assert with every graceful movement, "and we intend to keep it that away." And indeed as they head off for South Africa and Greece, among other destinations set for the new season, their status as cultural ambassadors of a distinctly delightful stripe cannot be disputed.



Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 05/03/2006
It's my turn to be Margot
They are ballerinas as you've never seen them before - with hairy chests and five o'clock shadow. Just don't go calling the Trocks a drag act, writes Louise Levene It isn't exactly a man's life in the ballet. Even supposing you're tall enough and handsome enough (or small enough and frisky enough) to qualify as a prince in the higher ranks, the ballerina still has all the best lines. Men may have their uses in classical story ballets but, no matter how faithfully they practise, they'll never get to be Swan Queen - unless, of course, they join the Trocks. Men in tutus: 'Les Sylphides' as performed by the Trocks, starring Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure) second from left Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo began in 1974 as something of a private joke. The choreographer Peter Anastos and his friends would truss themselves into toe shoes and perform sly but loving parodies of the great ballerinas in Manhattan lofts. Gradually, word spread and it became clear that the appeal of hairy-chested men in tutus reached beyond the New York ballet scene. Thirty-two years later, the 17-man company is touring almost constantly, spending nearly three months every year in dance-mad Japan and making regular visits to Australia, Europe and even Russia (the company's week-long season at the Bolshoi was a huge hit). They have a loyal following in the United States too. This month's London visit follows a barnstorming US tour: Bangor, Maine; Lincoln, Nebraska; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Athens, Ohio. Such towns may not be celebrated for their ballet culture, but all are regular stops on the Trocks' domestic circuit. Tory Dobrin, who was a Trocks ballerina for 18 years, becoming artistic director in 1992, admits that the US one-night stands can be wearing: 'When you're older, touring becomes harder. Getting into Indianapolis after a 10-hour bus ride from Warsaw, Wisconsin and heading out to another hotel on the highway with only McDonald's to eat … ' One suspects that the deep Mid-West holds few charms for a ballet-minded New Yorker of 52: 'It's the heart of America: George Bush country. I don't want to use the word "oppressive" but I don't leave the hotel.' You half imagine his boy ballerinas pirouetting behind a thick wire mesh, but not a bit of it. Everybody loves the Trocks because their delicious blend of high art and low comedy has an almost universal appeal - even among people who loathe straight ballet. Insiders get to chuckle knowingly at the clever, often painstakingly authentic, cross-dressed classical party-pieces - some of them, such as the heartbreaking Esmeralda, seldom seen outside the Trocks' eclectic repertoire. The rest of the audience needn't know its arabesque from its elbow to laugh out loud at Margeaux Mundeyn, Ida Nevasayneva and Olga Supphozova as they upstage their partners and work the curtain calls in true Russian style.
The jokes and pratfalls come thick and fast, but what makes the Trocks endure is the serious dancing at the heart of each performance. They take class every day and regularly invite guest teachers such as the former Royal Ballet star Georgina Parkinson. This attention to detail creates artists such as Yonny Manaure, a burly Venezuelan who is one of the finest Giselles in captivity. This is very definitely not a drag act, as Dobrin seems almost weary of pointing out. 'Yes, it is fun to dress in a gorgeous tutu and wear outlandish make-up and headpieces, but mostly the dancer has a comedic talent that has no outlet in classical ballet. That's what attracts him to the Trocks, not the idea of being in women's clothing.'
Although all classically trained, none of Dobrin's dancers has reached the higher ranks of a regular company. Ballet is not an equal opportunities employer at the best of times, but its physical determinism is at its most unforgiving when it comes to the danseur noble, the tall, handsome, elegantly shaped creature in tights who shows off the ballerina before being rewarded with a bravura solo or two. Even dancers who make the cut find that a prince's career can be depressingly short: lose your jump and drop a few entrechats and your audience will show little mercy - the ageing Nureyev was even sued by one dissatisfied customer after his final British tour. Ballerinas have it easier in many ways. Despite the art form's notorious body fascism, female principals still come in a surprising variety of shapes and sizes: from the waif-like Alina Cojocaru to the rangy Darcey Bussell. They don't even have to be pretty. What's more, their fans are more than happy to watch them age gracefully, well aware that maturity can bring a depth and musicality to a ballerina's performance to compensate for any fall-off in technique. The same holds true for a Trock. 'A Trock can keep going as long as he can dance,' says Dobrin. 'Generally, by the mid forties, the touring begins to take its toll but it's more a question of stamina. Our most senior ballerina is close to 45 years old and still dancing beautifully.' And why not, when the whole classical repertoire revolves around you? 'Ballet is woman,' as George Balanchine famously insisted. The great Russian-American choreographer may have written some of the meatiest male roles but his work and his life were devoted to his female dancers (he married four of them). For the 19th-century creators of ballets such as Giselle and Swan Lake, the Lears and Hamlets of dance, the ballerina was more important still, with each ballet specifically designed to exploit her dramatic and technical range. Putting on a frilly dress and toe shoes gives the male dancer access to a whole new world of possibilities. 'Women, in general, have had greater courage to express their emotional and spiritual side,' says Dobrin. 'I think that male dancers should have been able to express more emotional nuances in these great roles than they have had. Perhaps they never took the chance for fear of humiliating themselves.' Dobrin is always on the lookout for new material to add to his butterfly collection of ballerina personalities, but as the years pass and the great stars die off, he finds himself growing further from his chief points of reference. Once in a while he'll stumble across something he can use - Anastasia Volochkova 's one-woman extravaganzas provided a certain amount of material - but generally he finds little to emulate in today's stars: 'They have the technique but they just don't have the personality. They don't have any distinguishing things that I can think of.' The Trocks are equally at home parodying modern dance but their wide repertoire is rooted in the old favourites. The Dying Swan - a hilarious spavined fowl shedding feathers by the bolsterful - is wheeled out every night. Classical gags have a far broader appeal and this is a troupe that lives to entertain: 'These guys aren't studio-type dancers, they don't relish the rehearsal process. They love to perform.' As director, Dobrin is always slightly torn between ballet and box office: 'I really struggled with the London programme this time. I know it's important to bring new work but … ' In the end, the showman triumphed and the London season is stacked with familiar pleasures: Swan Lake Act II, the Dying Swan and the show- stopping grand pas from Paquita all danced with wit and bravura by men with hairy armpits and five o'clock shadows who triumph over physique to conjure a lost world of classical artistry: 'The Trocks prove that being a ballerina comes from the inside.'
· 'Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo ' will be at the Peacock Theatre, London, from March 21 to April 8








Trock `n' Roll - Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo - Critical Essay
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo The Joyce Theater New York, New York August 12-24, 2002
They're back! The wigs are better, and so is the dancing. Trockadero Artistic Director Tory Dobrin has assembled fifteen talented dancers, and Ballet Mistress Pamela Pribisco has assiduously drilled their thirty personas. (Each has a male and a female identity.) Their chief technical flaw is that they sometimes get so excited by the applause they evoke that they don't nail the finishes on big turns.
The Trocks' warhorse, Swan Lake Act II (with choreography after Lev Ivanov), is still trotting. Here it starred a more muscular than lyrical--though technically sure--Sveltlana Lofatkina (Fernando Medina Gallego) as Odette and stalwart Pepe Dufka (Raffaele Morra) as her Prince Siegfried. Much of the comedy worked: Tiny Igor Slowpokin (Manolo Molina), as Siegfried's confidante Benno, made a huffy exit, tripping ignominiously over a kneeling swan and in chagrin, gave her a kick. But wrong-way swans, withering glares, and pratfalls begged so broadly for laughs that one longed for less.
Agnes de Mille's 1928 solo Debut at the Opera, a trifle reconstructed by Janet Eilber and set to Delibes's music, was wrung for comedy by veteran Trock Ida Nevasayneva (Paul Ghiselin) in a Degasesque saffron tutu. She played a nervous young dancer, backstage, who keeps adjusting her painful toe shoe and falling out of pirouettes as she anticipates her auspicious first entrance. Spiky Nevasayneva also danced her signature role, The Dying Swan, hysterically milking the pathos and the curtain calls, topping the most histrionic of Russian divas
The grand pas de deux from Robert La Fosse's Stars and Stripes Forever was an unannounced bonus. Sturdy "virtuosa" Olga Supphozova (Robert Carter) was partnered by one of the three Legupski brothers--Dimitri (Ari Mayzick), to be precise. He's a sweet pup with a mean back-flip, and Supphozova's fouette turns with triple (count 'em!) pirouettes in between stopped the show.
"Pas de Trois des Odalisques" from Petipa's Le Corsaire was a showpiece for Lariska Dumbchenko (Morra), Colette Adae (Jason Hadley), and Supphozova. They went for broke with technically tough variations that could give ABT a run for its money. In Fokine's Les Sylphides, the only man, poetically emaciated Vladimir Legupski (Raymell Jamison), who looked nothing like his brothers Dimitri and Nikolai), was so disengaged that his barrel-chested partner, Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure), had trouble getting him to partner her.
Petipa's Paquita is a carnival of tricky variations by five etoiles: Nadia Rombova (Jai Williams), Maria Paranova (Jamison), Fifi Barkova (Molina), Sylphia Belchick (Carlos Garcia), and go-to gal Supphozova, backed by a classy corps, including Gerd Tord (Bernd Burgmaier), Maria Gertrudes Clubfoot (Edgar Cortes), Yurika Sakitumi (Hiroto Natori), and Elena Kumonova (Grant Thomas). Resident costume designer Mike Gonzales, who has infinitely enhanced the wardrobe overall, outdid himself with luscious tutus. Kip Marsh's and Tricia Tolliver's crisp lighting highlighted their rich hues.











Footnotes
January 04, 2005
Ballet en travesti
The New Yorker’s Joan Acocella checks out Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo:
“The Trocks’ business is comedy, and the basic joke, of course, is that men are dancing women’s roles. Just to see those size-10 point shoes, those yawning armpits, that chest hair peeping up over the bodices—I do not mention what greets you when the ballerina turns and her skirts fly up—is to laugh. Then, there are what you could call the vaudeville gags, excellent ones. (The cavalier and his lady, their dance completed, exit demurely; a moment later, you hear a crash and a scream from the wings.) At a higher level are the jokes specifically about ballet. Have you ever wondered, while watching Michel Fokine’s “Les Sylphides,” what those dainty, fingery, seeming-to-listen or seeming-to-whisper hand gestures are about? Well, so have the Trocks, and when, in their version of “Sylphides,” Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure) goes into this business, the corps dancers look at her as if she were mad.”
I’m looking forward to seeing the Trocks at Cal Performances in May, but if you can’t wait that long for a good laugh, they’re also playing the Marin Center (if you click, scroll down till you see the men in tutus) on January 16th.
Posted by Rachel at January 4, 2005 02:10 PM





December 23, 2004
DANCE REVIEW LES BALLETS TROCKADERO DE MONTE CARLO
Molting in the 5 O'Clock Shadow of a Dying Swan

By JENNIFER DUNNING
b more tinsel at the tree. Give that dreidel a hectic extra spin. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is back at the Joyce Theater, where it opened on Tuesday night. And none too soon. Watching the Trocks, as they are lovingly known throughout the dance world, one is transported back to the starry old days of ballet when dancers were joyously triumphant when they knocked off an extra pirouette or two and when the old ballet chestnuts were performed wholeheartedly.
Perhaps, too, the thrill of the Trocks' shows has to do with men realizing the impossible dream of being ballerinas, complete with silly Russian ballerina stage names, tutus, loaf-size toe shoes and very good dancing.
Happily, the humor these days, in this 30th-anniversary season, has less to do with satire than with the incongruity of these men in tutus. They do not impersonate women. They dance as women, goodheartedly and sometimes seemingly lost for a moment in a poignant fantasy of beauty. (Spindly male partners are called upon when necessary.)
Tuesday's program was fascinating for the insights it provided into familiar 20th-century ballets and to 19th-century works that are no longer performed. But you didn't need to be a balletomane or even an adult to enjoy the performance.
Given the level of technical expertise, balletomanes are likely to be surprised when two sylphs suddenly collide in "Les Sylphides," staged by Alexander Minz after the Fokine original. It stars Olga Supphozova (Robert Carter), Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure), fireplug-shaped virtuoso dancers, and the primly competitive Lariska Dumbchenko (Raffaele Morra) and a narcoleptic Pavel Tord (Bernd Burgmaier).
The collisions, the dancers' goofy names, and jokes based on the original sylphs' gestures of listening and murmuring to one another are genuinely funny. But this is a truly poetic "Sylphides" that in one gesture suggests the influence of Isadora Duncan, who toured Russia several years before this ballet. Insights like that are rare in more ordinary productions.
New Yorkers have seen the "Pas des Odalisques" from "Le Corsaire," but probably not the underwater scene from Petipa's "Humpback Horse," a 19th-century ballet that is as good as lost now. Kenneth Busbin's lavish, exquisite costumes for "Horse" recall photographs of early productions, and the male ballerinas look surprisingly like the hefty early female ones. Mmes. Dumbchenko and Supphozova were joined in "Odalisques" by the gracious Colette Adae (Jason Hadley). Fifi Barkova (Manolo Molina), a fierce little sweet pea, nearly stole the show as the Gold Fish.
George Balanchine gets his due in "Concerto Barocco" (in the Trocks' "Go for Barocco" version) and a fairly straightforward "Tarantella," performed with all the right brio by Svetlana Lofatkina (Fernando Medina Gallego) and Vladimir Legupski (Lionel Droguet). Vera Namethatunova (Scott De Cola) and Gerd Tord (Mr. Burgmaier) were the sisterly stars of "Barocco," which unfolds, Balanchine-like, with the high-speed weaving and unraveling of a cat's cradle.
Ida Nevasayneva (Paul Ghiselin) was the molting bird of "Dying Swan," a classic solo so campy that it's hard to send it up. But Mme. Nevasayneva was touching when she tried to reattach some of her many falling feathers. The show ends with surprise final curtain calls that should not be missed.
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo performs two different programs through Jan. 2 at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea.


Trock `n' Roll.(Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo)(Critical Essay) From: Dance Magazine Date: 11/1/2002 Author: Solomons, Gus, Jr
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo The Joyce Theater New York, New York August 12-24, 2002
They're back! The wigs are better, and so is the dancing. Trockadero Artistic Director Tory Dobrin has assembled fifteen talented dancers, and Ballet Mistress Pamela Pribisco has assiduously drilled their thirty personas. (Each has a male and a female identity.) Their chief technical flaw is that they sometimes get so excited by the applause they evoke that they don't nail the finishes on big turns.
The Trocks' warhorse, Swan Lake Act II (with choreography after Lev Ivanov), is still trotting. Here it starred a more muscular than lyrical--though technically sure--Sveltlana Lofatkina (Fernando Medina Gallego) as Odette and stalwart Pepe Dufka (Raffaele Morra) as her Prince Siegfried. Much of the comedy worked: Tiny Igor Slowpokin (Manolo Molina), as Siegfried's confidante Benno, made a huffy exit, tripping ignominiously over a kneeling swan and in chagrin, gave her a kick. But wrong-way swans, withering glares, and pratfalls begged so broadly for laughs that one longed for less.
Agnes de Mille's 1928 solo Debut at the Opera, a trifle reconstructed by Janet Eilber and set to Delibes's music, was wrung for comedy by veteran Trock Ida Nevasayneva (Paul Ghiselin) in a Degasesque saffron tutu. She played a nervous young dancer, backstage, who keeps adjusting her painful toe shoe and falling out of pirouettes as she anticipates her auspicious first entrance. Spiky Nevasayneva also danced her signature role, The Dying Swan, hysterically milking the pathos and the curtain calls, topping the most histrionic of Russian divas
The grand pas de deux from Robert La Fosse's Stars and Stripes Forever was an unannounced bonus. Sturdy "virtuosa" Olga Supphozova (Robert Carter) was partnered by one of the three Legupski brothers--Dimitri (Ari Mayzick), to be precise. He's a sweet pup with a mean back-flip, and Supphozova's fouette turns with triple (count 'em!) pirouettes in between stopped the show. "Pas de Trois des Odalisques" from Petipa's Le Corsaire was a showpiece for Lariska Dumbchenko (Morra), Colette Adae (Jason Hadley), and Supphozova. They went for broke with technically tough variations that could give ABT a run for its money. In Fokine's Les Sylphides, the only man, poetically emaciated Vladimir Legupski (Raymell Jamison), who looked nothing like his brothers Dimitri and Nikolai), was so disengaged that his barrel-chested partner, Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure), had trouble getting him to partner her.
Petipa's Paquita is a carnival of tricky variations by five etoiles: Nadia Rombova (Jai Williams), Maria Paranova (Jamison), Fifi Barkova (Molina), Sylphia Belchick (Carlos Garcia), and go-to gal Supphozova, backed by a classy corps, including Gerd Tord (Bernd Burgmaier), Maria Gertrudes Clubfoot (Edgar Cortes), Yurika Sakitumi (Hiroto Natori), and Elena Kumonova (Grant Thomas). Resident costume designer Mike Gonzales, who has infinitely enhanced the wardrobe overall, outdid himself with luscious tutus. Kip Marsh's and Tricia Tolliver's crisp lighting highlighted their rich hues.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Dance Magazine, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.





Troupe's shtick is right on pointe
Saturday, January 22, 2005
By Moira Macdonald Seattle Times arts critic
Review
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, those clown princes of ballet, made a triumphant return to Meany Hall Thursday night - complete with molting feathers, jangling tambourines, sweat-drenched tutus and, from the audience, shrieks of helpless laughter.
The Trocks, as they've been known throughout their 31-year history, are an all-male troupe specializing in faithful renditions of classic and modern ballets, performed with impressive technique and more than a bit of diva attitude. (Bent over on the floor in her final "Dying Swan" pose, prima ballerina Ida Nevasayneva - known off-pointe as Paul Ghiselin - coyly cued the crowd's applause, with some rather specific hand-fluttering.)
In their jumbo-sized pointe shoes and bunhead wigs, the Trocks have taken on the persona of an ultra-traditional Russian ballet company - one with, perhaps, too many stars and not enough underlings.
Opening with their trademark performance of Act 2 of "Swan Lake," each member of the corps de ballet emerged as a distinct personality. In contrast to standard ballet companies, in which the corps blends as one faceless entity, the Trocks proudly parade their individuality. One corps member looked quite worried throughout while another waved cheerfully at the crowd. Another became entangled in the folds of her tutu, and another was so overcome by the joy of dance that she began hopping uncontrollably, upsetting her fellow swans to the extent that you could imagine feathers flying backstage. This is all very funny stuff, performed by skilled comedians, but the shtick is balanced by some dancing that's occasionally breathtaking. Svetlana Lofatkina (Fernando Medina Gallego) as Odette in "Swan Lake" had a wonderfully light jump and speedy feet, not to mention a naughty smile and over-the-top swoon that would have well-served a silent film star. Olga Supphozova (Robert Carter) pounded a tambourine with her daintily pointed feet in a lively "Tarantella," in between tossing off lightning-quick pirouettes.
"Go for Barocco" was a hilarious satire of George Balanchine's minimalist ballets, complete with intricate cats-cradle weaving (resulting in a hopeless tangle) and a jazzy transformation of a trademark Balanchine move involving a jutting torso over a pointed toe. (Add just a bit of wiggling derriere and some popping wrists and it looks - well, not like what Mr. B. intended.)
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo performs at 8 tonight at Meany Hall (sold out).
"L'Ecole de Ballet" was a peek inside a ballet academy, run by the terrifying Madame Repelski (Margeaux Mundeyn/Yonny Manaure). Giggling students practiced at the barre, then traded solos at a recital, where we see the famed Trockadero personalities beginning to take shape. Call it divas in training The evening ended with a trademark Trocks encore, involving Benny Goodman's "Sing Sing Sing" and a sparkling disco ball. It wasn't quite as fabulous as the "Riverdance" encore of their last Seattle visit, but it shows that the Trocks keep moving forward, trying something new. Long live this company, who so aptly blend the joy of ballet and the fine art of silliness.

Trocks in frocks in Tokyo
by Jo RobertsTrockmania is a Japanese phenomenon. It's not quite Beatlemania, but comes close. The official Japanese fan club is in the thousands and female fans tail the Trocks around the country, loitering in hotel lobbies, giving them presents, even proposing marriage. Bizarre, really, considering nearly all the performers are gay -- a bunch of ballet-loving guys in tutus, performing classic ballets with a comic edge.Now Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo are heading here to perform (and parody) acts from classic works at the State Theatre from Thursday night. It's mid-July and The Age has joined the Trocks for a performance in week five of their annual Japanese tour. An ecstatic audience of 2500 watches as the curtain rises to reveal the statuesque, sinewy Ida Nevasayneva, demure in a white tutu. She begins to cast her spell, flitting and prancing atop her pointe shoes, delicately, ethereally, in Swan Lake.The crowd wildly applauds the faultless solo of the Swan Queen, Margeaux Mundeyn, who flutters her long, long eyelashes in coy appreciation. There is a rapturous reception and then -- laughter. This is no ordinary Swan Lake. Or Le Corsaire. Or Paquita. Woven into these highly skilled displays of dancing en pointe are some of the funniest sights you'll see on a ballet stage. But beneath the tulle, these impossibly graceful ballerinas are all men who love their ballet as much as they love getting laughs."Some people think, 'is it a dance company, a gay company, a drag show or what?' But when people do see the show, they're always surprised by how good it is,'' says artistic director Tory Dobrin, 47. He has been with the New York-based company since 1980 and danced up until only two years ago.The Trocks' first performance was on September 9, 1974, in a second-storey loft theatre on 14th Street in Manhattan. The show was a sell-out. In the 26 years since, they have been Trockin' all over the world, gaining more fans and greater prestige with every year. In 1999, for their 25th anniversary, the Trocks performed at the prestigious Lincoln Center in New York to more than 7500 people. They have appeared onstage with Royal Ballet principal Leanne Benjamin and on television shows ranging from a Shirley Maclaine special to The Muppets.
The company has toured Japan every year since 1982, one year twice. In the early years, it was just seven performances, but by 1990 it was 40, says Dobrin. In one year in the late1990s, the Trocks spent 15 weeks in Japan. "Everyone had nervous breakdowns, myself included,'' says Dobrin. "So now we do about seven weeks.''Bernd Bergmaier, for one, is confounded how some women get to so many shows. "I have no idea how they do it, but some of them are off (work) the whole time we're here,'' says the 23-year-old German. "You go from theatre to theatre and you see the same faces in the first row. Somehow, they get our schedule and our hotel lists. Sometimes they wait in the hotel lobby for hours until, finally, somebody walks by.''I'm sitting next to him on the slowcrawling bus that is wending its way to the theatre they will perform in tonight. Any Priscilla-like visions I had of feather boas cascading out bus windows dissipate as everyone settles in for the ride. Dobrin plays a video of Giselle during the trip. Some dancers watch it while others chat and laugh. For Casey Herd, 23, he's tuning out on headphones, to AC/DC's Back in Black, no less.His regular gig is with Pacific North-West Ballet in Seattle, but his best friend, Jason Hadley, who joined the Trocks in 1998, called him and asked if he'd like to come to Japan to perform the male roles. Not being a tutu-kind-of-guy, Herd agreed. It would be quite different to what he's used to? "Mmm, yeah!'' he laughs. "But I wanted to come back to Japan. I'd been here before with American Ballet Theatre a few years ago -- and hung out with all these guys,'' he laughs.So how did he get into dance? "My mom talked me into it when I was a kid. I used to do it with the excuse it was going to help my football. Then it was like, 'nah, forget it, I'm just doing ballet'. It's taken me a lot of places, I get to do a lot of things -- got me out of Utah,'' he concludes with a grin. The dancers come from all over the world, although most are American. They range in age from early 20s to late 30s, with more younger dancers joining as the Trocks have evolved over the years from alate-career novelty to a very respectable early-career choice.Bobby Carter, 26, joined in 1995, deciding at age 10 he wanted to be a Trock. "I love it, I'm spoiled. It's a fun job and I get to travel, see the world.'' Mark Rudzitis, 31, joined in 1993, after several years with New York's Ballet of the Dolls. "I'd heard of Trockaderos since I was a little kid. I saw an audition poster for Trockaderos and I thought 'oh my god! I have to go!'.'' He says Ballet of the Dolls was a "fairly nontraditional'' company. "We'd done drag numbers. And one time I did one piece with one pointe shoe.''Is it that much harder for a man than a woman to dance on pointe? "Well, male bodies have a higher percentage of muscle mass and muscle's heavier than fat,'' he says. "Plus we're not trained from little boys how to dance on pointe, so it's just a different musculature.'' But he admits, "Taking off your pointe shoes at the end of the night is the best feeling.''Italian recruit Raffaele Morra, who only joined the Trocks in May, says the hard part is getting "softness'' in the moves. "They are not male qualities of movement and that is what I have to practise,'' he says. "I always did strong roles, male roles, before this.'' So why did he join? "I love ballerina,'' he says in a thick accent. "In the company before I was a repititeur, so I watched the ballet, learning the female roles before the male; I always love the movements of the female ballerina. For me, the dance is nothing without pointe shoes.''As showtime nears, the dancers begin applying their makeup. Margeaux Mundeyn, aka Yonny Manaure from Venezuela, has religious pictures glued to the inside lid of his makeup case. "Chanel,'' says Yonny lovingly, picking up a Coco lipstick. "You know, it's really important to relax, to make the time for the makeup,'' he says softly in beautiful broken English. "When you're old, you don't do too much makeup. No. You look more natural, younger and pretty!' He is the elder statesman of the troupe, who all fondly call him Mama. So how old are you, Yonny? "Twenty-three,'' he whisperingly lies, to the chortles of his colleagues.Fans pay around 8000 yen -- around $157 -- for a ticket to the Trocks. Japan remains the unfunded company's most important market, ticket sales being their sole income. And when it comes to seeing the Trocks, the Japanese don't hold back. At the stage door, dressed in smart, conservative black, Yuko Naga, 31, has just seen her fourth Trocks show of this tour. Last year she saw them eight times. "I've seen them for 10 years,'' she says shyly.Despite their success and obvious skill, some people still refuse to take the Trocks seriously. World-renowned ballerina Sylvie Guillem is not interested in Trockadero at all, says Dobrin. "She says 'I don't need to see that','' he says. But does it frustrate him when people can't see the value, or indisputable skill? "No, because my motto is that it's important to be able to function in the world, not necessarily fit in,'' he says. "The thing about growing up gay and Jewish, you get a lot of bad energy coming your way when you're growing up. So you don't care, or you become bitter. I mean, who wants to be bitter?"In the early'80s it was really bad, we had no respect from anyone anywhere, but now we get a lot of respect. Times have changed. Twenty years after Madonna and RuPaul and those drag movies, society's completelychanged. The dancing's definitely better, but the show was great back then.'' Now they play in some of the finest theatres in the world. "If Sylvie Guillem deems us not worthy to see, yet we're accepted at the Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Victorian Arts Centre, then that's her problem.''(Jo Roberts travelled to Tokyo courtesy of the Victorian Arts Centre)


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Flash Review 1, 8-21: Power BalletGentle Grace, Explosive Runs from the Trocks
By Susan Yung Copyright 2000 Susan Yung
The Trockaderos are a peculiar genus in the dance world: like Pilobolus or Elizabeth Streb, prime occupants of specific niches. You hear the name and it goes without saying that you'll see traditional ballets performed by an all-male cast on pointe, with over-the-top charades and sight gags to lift the suffocating cloak of seriousness from ballet. It's also common knowledge that in recent years the company, under ballet mistress Pamela Pribisco, has become pretty good by any standard of judging ballet, and that this combination has attracted full houses of new faces, as was the case this weekend at the Joyce. The gags are hysterical for the first half hour, then become expected, then finally missed when absent. They poke fun at ballet's prissiness, its staidness, its unwavering faithfulness to tradition. They get miles out of silly theater stereotypes: the diva ballerina, the foppish prince, the competition among the corps, and of course, the unquenchable need to command the spotlight. The technique, notwithstanding one folly on the bill (I saw Program B, which included Merce Cunningham's "Crosscurrents"), was well-performed ballet. Some of the men have feet that, in pointe shoes, look like women's, or society's conventional concept thereof, if there is one. There are loose, limber extensions and pliant upper backs, and fluid arms; coquettishness abounds. There is also the disarming combination of the feminine strengths of a ballerina with the physicality of the male, often in one phrase. "Crosscurrents" was more of a set-up for the two onstage musicians than the three dancers; the musicians pulled all kinds of junk out of their instrument box to make the ambient sound, including a tin of cookies, from which they snacked. Though the rendition was all in good fun, the technique performed was unrecognizable as Cunningham; the dancers and dance merely incidental. The ballerinas occasionally showed the bit of extra effort needed to lift their legs higher, or to scale down their movements to better fit the smaller, original female patterns. The soloists, notably Robert Carter and Yonny Manaure, have perfected the sense of entitlement that goes with the role of prima ballerina. Carter's stunning bravura -- triple fouettes, five turns, back handsprings -- certainly makes for a most unusual female Paquita lead. Manaure's Odette ("Swan Lake") seamlessly combines a lovely, flirtatious side with a street-wise gang leader. The Trocks have created a new sort of power ballet similar to gymnastics' floor exercise: a bizarre combination of the fakery of gentle grace with frighteningly explosive runs of handsprings and flips. What persists besides this bionic ballet is a sense of self-determination, that anything is possiblewith the help of a little (okay, a lot) of makeup, fabulous costumes, and loads of humor. It's a very liberating thought. After watching the squarely-built "Margeaux Mundeyn" (Manaure) perform Odette for 20 minutes, it was easy to disregard her bulky anatomy as her arms fluttered as softly as Fonteyn's might have. With a bit of genetic luck and lots of hard work, it could be you or I in her pointe shoes -- engaging the heart of von Rothbart, the prince, and the audience -- and the world would be ours, too.
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo continues at the Joyce, with two programs, through Sunday.









danceviewtimeswriters on dancing

by Leigh Witchelcopyright © 2005 by Leigh Witchel “All of our ballerinas are in very good moods. . .”
So ends the announcement at every performance of the Trocks that begins with every dance reviewer’s nightmare; a litany of substitutions that sends the audience scrambling for their programs. It’s a shtick but it still works, an apt metaphor for the Trocks. Like the other travesti companies, the Trocks are affectionate parodists. There are people in the audience who wouldn’t be caught dead at Lincoln Center, who love the Trocks for the hairy armpits and the zany humor. There are also those like the very elegant Indian lady in the long fur coat in front of me. “Oh no, I was raised on Fonteyn and Beriosova,” she said happily as she sat back to watch the performance and I happily went back to envying her. The Trocks version of “Swan Lake, Act II” contains the mime passage where Odette explains the origin of the lake and her enchantment. It’s the real thing . . .well, with a few additions. They also retain Benno, and who does that anymore? Odette was performed by Svetlana Lofatkina (Fernando Medina Gallego). With no offense to Miranda Weese, Ms. Lofatkina reminds one of her sharp stage presence and incisive wit. One of Ms. Lofatkina’s best moments came when Benno, played by the small but puffed-up Igor Slowpokin (Manolo Molina), dropped her yet again. She cast him a withering glance and made a quick sign to indicate that this was mistake number two and he would not likely survive a third. The best of the travesti ballerinas, Ms. Lofatkina and Janie Sparker of the Grandiva company among them, are wonderful because you can tell in every performance how much they love ballet. When asked about the qualities necessary in a ballerina, Alexandra Danilova first named modesty. A ballerina has to love herself create a persona large enough not to wither onstage, but she has to love ballet even more. In the coda of “Swan Lake”, Ms. Lofatkina came out to do her series of arabesques on the diagonal. What was beautiful about it was not her lines. They were respectable but no matter how skilled men get in pointe work their bodies can’t produce feminine lines, only approximations. What was beautiful was how hard she tried to make those lines beautiful, even in the midst of all the jokes. She wasn’t trying to show us herself; she was trying to show us the ballet. Seeing the Trocks’ “Swan Lake” makes me love the conventional “Swan Lake” more, not less. The Trocks threw two unannounced pas de deux into the program, making for a long evening. The first was a version of “Tarantella” performed by Olga Supphozova (Robert Carter) and William Vanilla (Grant Thomas). There’s a difference between a Drag Queen and a Gender Illusionist. If you ask me, it’s that one has self-humor and the other doesn’t. This was less of a Drag “Tarantella” and more of a Gender Illusion one; I’ve seen wittier performances of the original version by biological females. It may be that it takes time for the jokes to evolve naturally in repeated performance; it may be the style of the individual ballerina. Ms. Supphozova performed with a fierce glint in her eyes; Danilova’s modesty was far from the scene. Although Ms. Supphozova did lift Mr. Vanilla, there were surprisingly few jokes in the performance and more of them were in the man’s part. Mr. Molina and Mr. Gallego exchanged genders in the pas de deux from “Don Quixote”, performing as their alter-egos Fifi Barkova and R.M. “Prince” Myshkin. This has been in the Trock’s repertory long enough for the gags to be woven logically and seamlessly into the usual choreography. The title of “I Wanted to Dance With You at the Café of Experience” is probably the most memorable joke in the piece. The dance is ostensibly a parody of Pina Bausch, not an easy task. Is putting a man in a dress with garish makeup and a bad wig something that Ms. Bausch wouldn’t do herself? The layers of disquieting gender identity in it are suitably Bauschian. I think she might enjoy seeing men abuse other men dressed as women. “L’École de Ballet”, by Peter Anastos, meanders through the conventions of the classroom ballet. The libretto is a bit like “Études” mixed with “Konservatoriet” with “Graduation Ball” dropped on top. Mme Repelski (Yonny Manaure) puts her petits rats through their paces at the barre; this culminates in a recital where all her students dutifully sit across the stage in chairs to await their turn to dance. Finally her shyest student, Collete Adae (Jason Hadley) gets rewarded with the big pas de deux with the new boy, Medulli Lobotomov (Ferran Casanova who both as Lobotomov and Alla Snizova has one of the most disquietingly manic grins in ballet). It’s a sweet-natured work, but some of its sweetness lies in its lack of focus. It’s heavy on fuzzy nostalgia and light on plot. A little backstage nastiness, some ground glass in a pointe shoe or a trapdoor left open on purpose might be just the ticket.
















Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
19 October 2006 - 18:30 @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Ballets_Trockadero_de_Monte_Carlo
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is an all-male drag ballet corps parodying the clichés of romantic and classical ballet. It was founded by choreographer Peter Anastos in the United States in 1974 as a group producing small shows for friends, performing late-late shows in off-off Broadway lofts.After receiving a favourable critical essay in The New Yorker by Arlene Croce, it was discovered by a wider audience, and now the "Trocks" tours the world, including prolonged engagements in many major cities.
The dancers portray both male and female (mainly female) roles in a humorous style that mixes send-ups of the cliches of ballet, posing, and physical comedy with "straighter" pieces intended to show off the performers' skill (but still with a certain amount of humour). Part of the comedy is seeing male dancers en travesti performing moves usually reserved to females, such as dancing en pointe.
The Best Dancer
Yonny ManaureBorn in Caracas, Venezuela; he joined the Trocks in May 1996.He portrays Jacques D'Aniels and Margeaux Mundeyn.Jacques (after danseur Jacques D'Amboise) was originally trained as an astronaut before entering the world of ballet. Margeaux (after ballerina Margot Fonteyn) was once the dresser of a great ballerina and began her career when she locked her mistress in the armoire and danced in her place.












Saturday, February 11, 2006
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo: Ballet of the absurd The guys, er, ballerinas are funnier than ever.
By LAURA BLEIBERG
The Orange County Register
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If you happened to be standing just outside the auditorium at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center on Thursday night, you might have thought it was comedians Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock causing the roof-raising laughter inside. And you would have thought wrong.
No, it was Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo - men in toe shoes and tutus - that had the crowd guffawing for two hours. The Trocks have been around for an astounding 32 years. The group's purpose in life is to lovingly and cleverly satirize classical dance and the romantic ballerina, especially. They were funnier than ever.
The company's comedic gifts are subtle, inside pokes at ballet history, making them more hilarious than if the Trocks looked for laughs through pratfalls and fluttering fake eyelashes only - though there's plenty of that going on, too. The guys, oops, the ballerinas, are of the old, old Russian school with names such as Margeaux Mundeyn (portrayed by Yonny Manaure) and Sylphia Belchik (Carlos Garcia).
They are not pretending to be dancers, they aredancers, although some are more accomplished than others. One minute, the soloist is whipping off double fouetté turns on point (one of the art form's ultimate tests), the next they've lost their balance and are tumbling over like dominoes. There are jokes both broad and pointed, satisfying viewers who are dance novices or knowledgeable balletomanes. The Long Beach audience was sophisticated enough to emit a steady stream of hoots and hollers throughout all three acts.
The curtain raiser was the Trocks' version of Mikhail Fokine's 1908 masterpiece "Les Sylphides." The ballet's Poet, Stanislas Kokitch (Tibor Harvath) was indeed a lost soul here, staring blankly from underneath a Buster Brown white wig and exiting the stage so slowly one ballerina urged him to get lost. The corps de ballet was a model of poise and placement - except for frequent distractions such as breaking rank to adjust their costumes or that errant ballerina who slid off to grab an apple, which she chomped onstage. The second act offered three divertissements, two of historic and one of modern proportions. The latter came from George Balanchine's "Tarantella" pas de deux (performed in original format just last October in Laguna Beach at the CaDance Festival), which was created in 1964 for Patricia McBride and Edward Villella. Sveltlana Lofatkina (Fernando Medina Gallego) leapt and scampered with light and joyous abandon. Her steady whipped turns were inspiring. Her partner Vladimire Legupski (Lionel Droguet) was equally spirited and adept at beats and tamborine clapping. "Le Grand Pas de Quatre," a re-creation of an 1845 gathering of the century's greatest divas, was the night's highlight, full of limpid style, backbiting competition and darn great dancing. Yakatarina Verbosovich (Chase Johnsey), Ludmila Beaulemova (Scott Weber), Maria Gertrudes Clubfoot (Edgar Cortes) and, especially, the scene-stealing Lariska Dumbchecko (Raffaele Morra) perfectly personified these larger-than-life ladies.
Finally, there was the solo par excellence, "The Dying Swan," with Gerd Tord (Bernd Burgmaier) shedding clumps of feathers, while her legs turned to rubber. As befitting a star of the Russian ballet, her four and five in-front-of-curtain bows were lavish and overly long.
The night ended with an excerpt from "Paquita," executed with appropriate pomp. Olga Supphozova (Robert Carter) was the assured, barrel-chested lead ballerina with the beauty queen grin. "Prince" Myshkin (Fernando Medina Gallego) wasn't quite her match (no male is, with the Trocks), and Supphozova had Myshkin doing push-ups after a flubbed lift. All the gals were sturdy on their toe shoes and the leaps were clean and high. The audience's exuberant applause was rewarded with an encore - a scene straight from "Riverdance." Just when you thought the Trocks couldn't top themselves, they did. Wrong again.
Contact the writer: (714) 796-4976 or lbleiberg@ocregister.com

Dancing Ladies and Gentlemen
The Trocks.
by Joan Acocella January 10, 2005
de Monte Carlo, a travesty troupe, with men darting about on point as sylphs and odalisques, made its début in 1974 in a loft on Fourteenth Street managed by the West Side Discussion Group, a homophile organization. The stage was a twelve-by-twelve piece of plywood; the audience sat on folding chairs. “The place was on the second floor, and the stairs were steep,” says Eugene McDougle, an archeologist who lost his heart to that show and has been the general director of the company ever since. “The Fire Department could have closed us down.” So could the ballet authorities. With a cast of ten, the show had only two men who could actually do classical dancing. That first season lasted two weekends. Today, the Trocks, as they are known, work forty weeks a year. They are a sensation, and a staple. Has success spoiled them? I don’t know—I wasn’t there in 1974—but when, last month at the Joyce, I watched the opening night of their thirtieth-anniversary season, I thought, These people are delivering more bang for the buck than most other classical companies in America. The Trocks’ business is comedy, and the basic joke, of course, is that men are dancing women’s roles. Just to see those size-10 point shoes, those yawning armpits, that chest hair peeping up over the bodices—I do not mention what greets you when the ballerina turns and her skirts fly up—is to laugh. Then, there are what you could call the vaudeville gags, excellent ones. (The cavalier and his lady, their dance completed, exit demurely; a moment later, you hear a crash and a scream from the wings.) At a higher level are the jokes specifically about ballet. Have you ever wondered, while watching Michel Fokine’s “Les Sylphides,” what those dainty, fingery, seeming-to-listen or seeming-to-whisper hand gestures are about? Well, so have the Trocks, and when, in their version of “Sylphides,” Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure) goes into this business, the corps dancers look at her as if she were mad. Has the so-called Poet, the only man onstage amid the wood sprites, ever seemed to you unusual? Why does he look so abstracted? Has he risen from the dead? Pavel Törd (Bernd Burgmaier), who played the Poet on opening night, had the same questions, and no answer. He padded about, in an ill-fitting blond wig, with his eyes fixed on—what? The auditorium’s exit sign? At one point, with great eloquence, he simply stood there and rotated his wrists so that his palms faced us. “Why am I here?” he seemed to say. “Why are all these fairies running around, hurling themselves at me?” Others of the Trocks’ pieces, more scholarly, are studies of a choreographer’s style. That was the specialty of Peter Anastos, who was one of the company’s founders and original dancers. Before his Trocks period, Anastos had put in many years as a balletomane. Later, he became the artistic director of the Garden State Ballet, then of Cincinnati Ballet, and he created a number of lovely “straight” ballets for those and other companies. He was a serious student of the art, and his 1974 “Go for Barocco,” a takeoff on Balanchine’s “Concerto Barocco,” is as punctilious an analysis as has ever been made of the great choreographer’s modernization of the danse d’école: his melding of jazz steps with ballet steps, his blending of play with formality, his creation of what was, in the end—though I didn’t see it until Anastos showed me—a rather strange all-female fellowship on the stage. Balanchine included one man, basically just to lift the lead woman. Anastos quietly corrected this. “Go for Barocco” is all ladies. Still other items in the Trocks’ repertory are essays not just on ballet but on ballet culture, the customs and legends that have collected around the art. When Anna Pavlova, that most sainted of ballerinas, died, in 1931, her company, at its next performance, shone a spotlight on an empty stage while the music for “The Dying Swan,” her signature piece, played. Accordingly, the Trocks’ “Dying Swan” begins with a spotlight beaming hotly on one wing and then, oops, on another, then another, until at last Ida Nevasayneva (Paul Ghiselin) bourrées out to undergo the celebrated extinction. Once she dies, furthermore, you can’t get her off the stage. She milks the applause endlessly; she clearly wants to do an encore. This, again, is a joke on ballet culture. “The Dying Swan” is probably the most encored work in the entire classical repertory. The Bolshoi’s Maya Plisetskaya—famous diva, famous hot dog—was known to perform it four times in a row. The Trocks love her for that. “We’re kind of selling ourselves as an old, dusty touring Russian ballet company that the modern age doesn’t have anymore,” Tory Dobrin, the troupe’s artistic director, told the Daily News recently. In fact, we do see something like that now and then—for example, when the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, which has had a number of important Russian teachers, comes to town. But Dobrin is right. The smell of the greasepaint, the ballerina in excelsis, the demented fans: for the most part, that kind of company is now an honored ghost. The last pure example was Sergei Denham’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, from whom the Trocks took their name. The Ballet Russe toured America from the nineteen-thirties through the nineteen-fifties, at which point it died a slow, overdue death. It’s nice of the Trocks to pay their grandmother this tribute.
Classical drag is anything but

BY SUSAN REITERSusan Reiter is a freelance writer.
December 27, 2004
Everyone will find a personal favorite diva amid the divine array of old-world glamour known as Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. Who can resist the fierce bravura of Olga Supphozova (aka Robert Carter), the troupe's feisty platinum blonde, who attacked three major roles on opening night with an air of gleeful wonder, making multiple pirouettes look like child's play? Or the perpetually molting "Dying Swan" of Ida Nevasayneva (Paul Ghiselin), always sure to flash the audience a sweet smile in between her over-the-top death throes? Or the determined attack of Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure), whose brawny build, swathed in white tulle, threatened to overwhelm her pale slip of a partner in "Les Sylphides"?
For these two weeks, Les Cagelles of Broadway's "La Cage aux Folles" are no longer the only guys in town displaying glamorous gams and eye makeup out to there. But the 18 men of the Trocks - each of whom inhabits both a male and female "Russian" persona on the company roster - have strong ballet technique, and they can pull off demanding choreography in pointe shoes.
When Supphozova, Colette Adae (Jason Hadley) and Lariska Dumbchenko (Raffaele Morra), resplendent in emerald tutus, take on the virtuosic "Pas des Odalisques" from "Le Corsaire," you see much the same choreography as you would in American Ballet Theatre's production. They ham it up a bit, of course - one enters a bit too soon, one overemphasizes her arm gestures, and in the finale Dumbchenko's turns a jumping sequence into a flailing cartoon. But there's no doubt about it, these gals have the chops.
The Trocks love to embody and parody the long-vanished grand manner and absurd mannerisms that were de rigueur for ballerinas of another era. In "Les Sylphides," their version of the 1909 Fokine classic, that may mean breaking the mood of languid romanticism with a "tada, I did it!" display of triumph, or mercilessly knocking over an ensemble member who's reclining painfully in a tableau - and who, naturally, is then wary each time her tormentor comes near.
The Trocks are marking their 30th anniversary, and the program included one of its classics, founder Peter Anastos' "Go for Barocco." First seen in 1975, this clever Balanchine parody compresses and lovingly sends up Mr. B's sublime "Concerto Barocco," tossing in as many other Balanchine references as possible. These six "women" (no partners needed here!) may not manage to intertwine their arms without getting tangled, but they sure can power-walk.
In the first of two New York City premieres, Pamela Pribisco's "after Balanchine" staging of "Tarantella" stayed close to the original in its high-flying, tambourine-whacking energy. Sveltlana Lofatkina Fernando Medina Gallego) and the adorable Vladimir Legupski (Lionel Droguet) brought down the house. The ambitious and charmingly designed Underwater Scene from "The Humpback Horse" was a Technicolor parade of sea creatures, including two starfish wearing eyeglasses and a pair of dancing corals. The original Russian ballet dates back to 1864, though Elena Kunikova's deft staging is based on slightly later versions. Sylphia Belchick (Carlos Garcia), a petite dynamo, blazed through rapid-fire turns as the Gold Fish. Supphozova was the commanding Queen of the Underwater, her diagonal line of powerful leaps confirming her power. Marat Legupski (Scott deCola) was the sleek, fantastical Genie of the Underwater. Kenneth Brisbin's lovingly detailed costumes included headpieces that resembled algae for the sprightly six-member ensemble. There were whimsical moments, but here the dancing was mostly played straight, in a performance marked by the Trocks' abiding affection for lavish scenarios and fairy-tale characters. As though they had not already delivered enough giddy delight, the company turned themselves into Rockettes for an adorable holiday-themed encore.
LES BALLETS TROCKADERO DE MONTE CARLO. "Les Sylphides," "Pas des Odalisques" from "Le Corsaire," "Go for Barocco," "Tarantella," "The Dying Swan," Underwater Scene from "The Humpback Horse." Two programs alternate through Jan. 2 at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave. at 19th Street, Manhattan. Tickets, $42. Call 212-242-0800 or visit www .joyce.org. Seen Tuesday.
Copyright (c) 2004, Newsday, Inc.


THE TRAVESTY AND THE ECSTASY
By Steve Schneider
The Internet is full of name generators that can instantly equip ordinary citizens with new identities as porn stars and other larger-than-life figures. But among fans of the so-called travesty ballet, a more specific taxonomy game is possible: What's your Trock name? The choices are endless – almost. You just can't be Sveltlana Lofatkina. Or Olga Supphozova. Or Ida Nevasayneva. Because those are some of the names already taken by members of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, an all-male comedy dance troupe dedicated to celebrating the classical ballet through aggressive cross- dressing and witty exaggeration.
Every member of the Trocks takes one female and one male alias (which explains how dancer Yonny Manaure can be both Margeaux Mundeyn and the only slightly more masculine Jacques d'Aniels). The result is a company fully staffed to perform the most lyrical choreographies in the canon – as long as the sight of beefy divas clad in oversized pointe shoes and exhibiting copious amounts of unfortunate bodily hair doesn't strike you as especially inelegant.
The gender politics of dance are an obvious target as the Trocks take to the stage for another evening of same-sex pas de deux and other affectionate travesties. But it's the theatrical pretensions of the art form in general that provide them with nonstop vaudeville fodder. Witness their rendition of The Dying Swan, in which the title bird molts all over the stage, dropping feathers left and right while on "her" way to a melodramatic demise that's prolonged more for the pleasure of the performer than the audience. The rampant egomania we associate with dance suffers a direct hit to the solar plexus every time one of the Trocks physically undermines a castmate on stage, or another gets lost in a reverie of showboating that puts her horribly out of sync with the corps.
The group was founded in the drag-happy downtown Manhattan of the early 1970s, making them spiritual contemporaries not only of Baryshnikov and Nureyev, but of Jayne County and David Johansen as well. Few artists can claim such a well-rounded lineage, and in the ensuing three decades, the Trocks have become accepted mainstream entertainment, praised for their rigorous, scholarly technique and touring regularly. (Their summer visits to Japan are said to have fueled a thriving fan club.) Along the way, several members have been lost to AIDS – muting, some critics have noticed, their parodies of the classical ballet's more tragic narratives – but the approach and the repertoire have stayed largely the same.
As with all comedians, the Trocks have to work three times harder than their "serious" counterparts to get their message across. (Weighty male frames balancing on pointe for extended periods of time – you do the math.) Beneath the rubber starfish they wear to interpret the underwater scene from The Humpback Horse, these are some well-schooled professionals who claim to regard their chosen material with the respect – not just the outlandish temperament – of an old-fashioned Russian company.
The need for (and value of) such devotion naturally raises extra-luminous warning flags over any indication that the act might be slipping. In a review published last January in The New Yorker, Joan Acocella observed that the great Robert Carter (who dances as Supphozova and the male Yuri Smirnov) was visibly cutting corners, not bothering to raise his feet high enough and finishing his pirouettes lackadaisically. Yet for the layman, the more salient question is how readily the Trocks, even at their best, can succumb to the P.D.Q. Bach syndrome – that of the highbrow in-joke that's a source of unbridled hilarity to fellow aficionados, but which leaves average Joes and Janes shaking their heads and surmising that you hadda be there. Filmed performances show that the full effect of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo lives in close-up, with the fatuously rapturous look on a dancer's face conveying the subtext that, yes, this is all inherently ludicrous, and what a way to live. Seen from farther away, their goonish dips and pliés can strike the uneducated as only slightly more embellished than the real thing. (Dance is an exaggeration in the first place – the illusion of effortless grace imparted to movements that are often painfully unnatural.) The Trocks' act could be the best-yet argument for gold-circle seating, or it could merely be the long-awaited answer to the age-old question, "What's the difference between parody and homage?" About 10 rows, is what it looks like.
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo8 pm Tuesday, Jan 10


Trocks Transcendentby Elizabeth ZimmerAugust 21 - 27, 2002

L es Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, whose antic approach to classic dances continues at the Joyce through Saturday, provides more than a lot of laughs and the charge that comes from watching skilled ballerinas do their stuff. This 28-year-old, 15-man ensemble, based in Manhattan, tours internationally. It has made enormous strides in the past decade, developing technical prowess under the direction of ballet mistress Pamela Pribisco that would be the envy of any regional ballet company.For those of us who genuinely believe that ballet is over - that it's time for the dance world to turn its fiscal and creative energies in directions less ossified and sexist - the Trocks provide ammunition in the form of well-aimed parody, and also demonstrate, by flouting a whole range of conventions, the way traditional ballet reinforces rigid sex roles and attitudes about body shape and partnering. Really tall women and short men are routinely rejected by top-flight troupes, as are dancers of color and those packing a few extra pounds. The Trocks give such performers an arena in which to sparkle, and the result is a level of energy rarely visible on ballet stages. Anyone caught in a nonstop cycle of dieting knows that food is fuel, and that eating too little can chip away at your strength. The dancers of the Trockadero value power over slimness (though several of them, lord knows, are as skinny as your average anorexic ballerina), and can execute the silly multiple fouettes as well as many women, kick their legs to their ears without losing their centers, and hoist their male partners in ways most female ballet dancers can only dream about. Paradoxically, it's the guys' passion for ballet that lets them send it up so enthusiastically, and that keeps audiences - gay and straight, young and doddering, many bearing bouquets for their favorite divas - packing the house nightly. The costuming and makeup are really quite stunning; impersonating a ballerina, who generally has no rack to speak of, is not hard for many male dancers. One African American diva, the rangy Jai Williams playing Nadia Rombova, wore sparkly black glasses with her blond-bun wig in Paquita, the dazzling Petipa work that closes Program B. That the entire roster is composed of guys (who have both female and male alter egos) becomes obvious primarily when you look at their feet. A size-15 pointe shoe is an astonishing thing to behold, and a six-foot-tall dude balanced in a pair of them is a vision rarely countenanced in a traditional troupe. What the Trocks let us see are giant women partnering tiny men. Carlos Garcia, a small Filipino who performs as both Sylphia Belchick and Nikolai Legupski, is a real treasure, especially as Legupski partnering the towering Williams (as Rombova) in La Vivandiere. This rousingballet - originally choreographed by Arthur Saint Leon to music by Cesare Pugni and staged by Elena Kunikova (who has impeccable Kirov credentials) - was the sleeper hit of the strong Program A, which left an ecstatic audience crooning. The final piece on that bill, a new production of Don Quixote that blithely dispenses with both the eponymous hero and his sidekick Sancho Panza, offers up terrific Latin-flavored performances by Mi[hlargeaux Mundeyn, Fifi Barkova, and R.M. (Prince) Myshkin - Yonny Manaure, Manolo Molina, and Fernando Medina Gallego, respectively. New works this season include one misfire, Debut at the Opera, a solo for veteran Trock Paul Ghiselin as Ida Nevasayneva in a 1928 work by Agnes de Mille, reconstructed by Janet Eilber. Based on the paintings of Degas, and set on a bare stage with a stepladder serving as a barre, it's unfamiliar to audiences, who therefore have no handle on how to respond. Is it parody, or just fond evocation? This and several other pieces seemed overlong, as they would have in "straight" renderings by an ordinary troupe. Les Sylphides, an abstract romantic ballet to Chopin, here becomes a tedious exercise in crowd control for nine white-clad ballerinas and a neurasthenic man. Peter Anastos's "pirate ballet," to music by Giuseppe Verdi, features scimitar-wielding ballerinas but makes too few sharp points. Mugging and attitude will get you pretty far, but finally it's skill and intriguing choreography that keep fans coming back for more.




Tuesday, January 28, 2003Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo delivers expected comedy

By JULIA OSBORNEREVIEW-JOURNAL
There's nothing particularly outrageous about a performance of "Swan Lake" featuring dancers in tights, tutus and toe shoes. Yet when it's performed by the Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, things are rarely as they seem.
The fine and often funny moves of the cross-dressing dancers made for a silly and satisfying evening for the nearly sell-out crowd at Artemus Ham Hall at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Saturday.
Two selections from "Swan Lake" were featured in a program that also included several more contemporary works.
The company, formed in 1974 with early performances past prime time in off-off Broadway settings, dances with tongues firmly in cheek. At the same time, all are classically trained and have spent time in other companies, from the Metropolitan Opera Ballet to Los Angeles Classic Ballet. Jai Williams, one of the featured performers Saturday, danced with Las Vegas' Nevada Dance Theatre (now Nevada Ballet Theatre) before joining the Trockadero troupe in 1994.
As part of the fun, the program lists fictitious Russian dancers, complete with fanciful biographies.
The primary problem of the performance occurs just because the dancers are good. So much of the time onstage is over-the-top: a dying swan that sheds a flurry of feathers with each step, a male principal who can't quite cope with a prima ballerina's lifts and has to call for assistance. Yet there are passages that -- once you get beyond the fact that those are males, not females, dancing on point -- are simply fine, classical ballet. It's not bad, but it's not why the audience came.
Another minor concern was that one of the dances is already designed to be a comical piece. "Yes, Virginia, Another Piano Ballet" was performed by the Nevada Ballet Theatre in the past couple of years, and there it was extra amusing to see veterans being silly. Here, it was also funny, but it didn't require any different moves from what are typically choreographed.
This stop was the second of the Trockadero 2003 season, which will see them dancing throughout the United States, as well as making a stop in Guatemala in February and spending six weeks in Japan this summer.
The company last performed here in March 2000, and was asked to return because of its popularity.
The evening opened with the second act of "Swan Lake," with tall, lanky Williams as Odette. Dramatic in white tights and tutu, his dazzling smile and blue eye shadow could have been seen in the last row. He spent much time on point, punctuated with more than one series of lavish pirouettes. The six swans had many skills and many silly moves, too. They included pratfalls and a section where swans did what swans may do: ticking their heads and grooming their wings. Physically, few resembled ballerinas. One reminded of the late John Belushi if he had taken a turn as a dancer.
Some Trockadero dancers do take the parts of males, including three in this selection who provide noble support to the swans. Males as males do not always take second seat to the other dancers, including Grant Thomas and Yonny Manaure in "Piano Ballet," each given time for a fine solo.
The evening concluded with "Stars and Stripes Forever," a nod to a '50s patriotic piece that was first danced by the New York City Ballet, with the company in a sparkle of red, white and blue sequins and bright and white tutus. It was lighthearted, yet appropriate -- and proved that it is possible to dance on point to a march.



or small enough and frisky enough) to qualify as a prince in the higher ranks, the ballerina still has all the best lines. Men may have their uses in classical story ballets but, no matter how faithfully they practise, they'll never get to be Swan Queen - unless, of course, they join the Trocks.

Men in tutus: 'Les Sylphides' as performed by the Trocks, starring Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure) second from left
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo began in 1974 as something of a private joke. The choreographer Peter Anastos and his friends would truss themselves into toe shoes and perform sly but loving parodies of the great ballerinas in Manhattan lofts. Gradually, word spread and it became clear that the appeal of hairy-chested men in tutus reached beyond the New York ballet scene.
Thirty-two years later, the 17-man company is touring almost constantly, spending nearly three months every year in dance-mad Japan and making regular visits to Australia, Europe and even Russia (the company's week-long season at the Bolshoi was a huge hit). They have a loyal following in the United States too. This month's London visit follows a barnstorming US tour: Bangor, Maine; Lincoln, Nebraska; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Athens, Ohio. Such towns may not be celebrated for their ballet culture, but all are regular stops on the Trocks' domestic circuit.
Tory Dobrin, who was a Trocks ballerina for 18 years, becoming artistic director in 1992, admits that the US one-night stands can be wearing: 'When you're older, touring becomes harder. Getting into Indianapolis after a 10-hour bus ride from Warsaw, Wisconsin and heading out to another hotel on the highway with only McDonald's to eat … ' One suspects that the deep Mid-West holds few charms for a ballet-minded New Yorker of 52: 'It's the heart of America: George Bush country. I don't want to use the word "oppressive" but I don't leave the hotel.'
You half imagine his boy ballerinas pirouetting behind a thick wire mesh, but not a bit of it. Everybody loves the Trocks because their delicious blend of high art and low comedy has an almost universal appeal - even among people who loathe straight ballet. Insiders get to chuckle knowingly at the clever, often painstakingly authentic, cross-dressed classical party-pieces - some of them, such as the heartbreaking Esmeralda, seldom seen outside the Trocks' eclectic repertoire. The rest of the audience needn't know its arabesque from its elbow to laugh out loud at Margeaux Mundeyn, Ida Nevasayneva and Olga Supphozova as they upstage their partners and work the curtain calls in true Russian style.
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The jokes and pratfalls come thick and fast, but what makes the Trocks endure is the serious dancing at the heart of each performance. They take class every day and regularly invite guest teachers such as the former Royal Ballet star Georgina Parkinson. This attention to detail creates artists such as Yonny Manaure, a burly Venezuelan who is one of the finest Giselles in captivity. This is very definitely not a drag act, as Dobrin seems almost weary of pointing out. 'Yes, it is fun to dress in a gorgeous tutu and wear outlandish make-up and headpieces, but mostly the dancer has a comedic talent that has no outlet in classical ballet. That's what attracts him to the Trocks, not the idea of being in women's clothing.'
Although all classically trained, none of Dobrin's dancers has reached the higher ranks of a regular company. Ballet is not an equal opportunities employer at the best of times, but its physical determinism is at its most unforgiving when it comes to the danseur noble, the tall, handsome, elegantly shaped creature in tights who shows off the ballerina before being rewarded with a bravura solo or two. Even dancers who make the cut find that a prince's career can be depressingly short: lose your jump and drop a few entrechats and your audience will show little mercy - the ageing Nureyev was even sued by one dissatisfied customer after his final British tour.
Ballerinas have it easier in many ways. Despite the art form's notorious body fascism, female principals still come in a surprising variety of shapes and sizes: from the waif-like Alina Cojocaru to the rangy Darcey Bussell. They don't even have to be pretty. What's more, their fans are more than happy to watch them age gracefully, well aware that maturity can bring a depth and musicality to a ballerina's performance to compensate for any fall-off in technique. The same holds true for a Trock. 'A Trock can keep going as long as he can dance,' says Dobrin. 'Generally, by the mid forties, the touring begins to take its toll but it's more a question of stamina. Our most senior ballerina is close to 45 years old and still dancing beautifully.'
And why not, when the whole classical repertoire revolves around you? 'Ballet is woman,' as George Balanchine famously insisted. The great Russian-American choreographer may have written some of the meatiest male roles but his work and his life were devoted to his female dancers (he married four of them). For the 19th-century creators of ballets such as Giselle and Swan Lake, the Lears and Hamlets of dance, the ballerina was more important still, with each ballet specifically designed to exploit her dramatic and technical range. Putting on a frilly dress and toe shoes gives the male dancer access to a whole new world of possibilities. 'Women, in general, have had greater courage to express their emotional and spiritual side,' says Dobrin. 'I think that male dancers should have been able to express more emotional nuances in these great roles than they have had. Perhaps they never took the chance for fear of humiliating themselves.'
Dobrin is always on the lookout for new material to add to his butterfly collection of ballerina personalities, but as the years pass and the great stars die off, he finds himself growing further from his chief points of reference. Once in a while he'll stumble across something he can use - Anastasia Volochkova 's one-woman extravaganzas provided a certain amount of material - but generally he finds little to emulate in today's stars: 'They have the technique but they just don't have the personality. They don't have any distinguishing things that I can think of.'
The Trocks are equally at home parodying modern dance but their wide repertoire is rooted in the old favourites. The Dying Swan - a hilarious spavined fowl shedding feathers by the bolsterful - is wheeled out every night. Classical gags have a far broader appeal and this is a troupe that lives to entertain: 'These guys aren't studio-type dancers, they don't relish the rehearsal process. They love to perform.'
As director, Dobrin is always slightly torn between ballet and box office: 'I really struggled with the London programme this time. I know it's important to bring new work but … ' In the end, the showman triumphed and the London season is stacked with familiar pleasures: Swan Lake Act II, the Dying Swan and the show-stopping grand pas from Paquita all danced with wit and bravura by men with hairy armpits and five o'clock shadows who triumph over physique to conjure a lost world of classical artistry: 'The Trocks prove that being a ballerina comes from the inside.'
'Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo ' will be at the Peacock Theatre, London, from March 21 to April 8















Yonny Manaure (Margeaux Mundeyn and Jacques d'Aniels). Birthplace: Caracas, Venezuela. Training: Escuela Nina Nikanorova. Joined Trockadero: May 1996. Previous companies: Ballet Nacional de Colombia, Ballet Nuevo Mundo de Caracas, Ballet Nacional de Caracas.











Margeaux Mundeyn, originally a dresser to a great
ballerina, began her career when, one night, she
locked her mistress in the armoire and danced in her
place. Although hailed by critics for her wonderful
technique, she fooled no one. She was immediately
sought after by companies and impresarios alike,
but decided instead to spend some time on her
acting. Now she is both a technical and a dramatic
ballerina. The whereabouts of her former mistress
are not known.