What if sixteen Mr Beans danced ballet? – together? You might get Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo: a stumbling, squabbling, catty ensemble of drag-ballerinas whose lugubrious expressions can make even the most earnest and well-executed pirouette produce fits of laughter from its audience. With stage-names like Jacques d’Aniels and  Marina Plezegetovstageskaya they lampoon ballet greats like Swan Lake and Petipa’s Paquita, to the modern dance of Merce Cunningham.

‘The Trocks’ (as they are affectionately called) have been making work for almost 40 years, and have played at just about every major ballet house in the world: from the Ballet Russes, to Chatelet, and Sadler’s Wells they have made a name for themselves as the silly kids of classical dance, bringing drag-queen hilarity to the serious gymnastics of ronde-de-jambe, pas-de-chat, fouettes, and fondus.

Their signature work is ‘Le Lac des Cinges’ (Swan Lake, Act II), a send-up of ballet’s favourite story of metamorphosis. As in Matthew Bourne’s all-male Swan Lake, there is another metamorphosis at work here between male and female, but unlike Bourne the purpose is to irreverently play with balletic conventions. For example the miming of dialogue between characters becomes an absurd semaphoring between Prince Siegfried and Odette (played excellently by Yuri Smirnov/Robert Carter and Marina Plezegetovstageskaya/Roberto Forleo). Their amazing elegance and grace is all the more enjoyable for the moments of deliberate awkwardness or machismo that interrupt the patterns of movement, often breaking the veneer into butch ‘asides’ to the audience or one another, moving effortlessly between the braggadoccio and the ballerina. In one quartet the dancer’s heads move completely in time with the rest of their bodies, before suddenly starting to head-bang to the Tchaikovsky music, still with the bodies keeping perfect time.

Patterns in Space sees the lead duo from Swan Lake sitting in front of music stands, playing live music ‘after John Cage’ to a choreography ‘after Merce Cunningham’. Three dancers in crushed velvet leotards move through a sequence of angular turning poses and partnerings, making shapes, shapes, and more shapes in earnest minimal modern dance, while Carter and Forleo provide their cheeky overlay of musique concrete: rustling paper bags, wonderfully timed tin whistles, and sleazy kazoos. All the while the distressed trio of dancers persevere with their serious regime, determinedly following the patterns of movement and their limping steps.

 It is a wonderful answer to the melodrama of Swan Lake. Following this is Peter Anastos’ choreography Go For Barocco: described as “a wristwatch for Balanchine clock-time”. Balletic footwork transforms into little jigs and struts of joy, or break into the absurd hip-rolling action of ‘power-walking’ and other aerobic exercises. Tableaus of the dancer’s bodies easily become awkwardly sexualised as the work moves almost imperceptibly between the sublime and the absurd. A beautiful rivalry emerges between two dancers, in an ironic macho show-down to be more feminine: showing off their full leg extensions, puffing out their chests in plié, and trying to always have their had on top of their partner’s.

The dance is also really good. It is not just a prop for the comedy – these men all move with amazing control and grace through movements usually designed for the female body. It is amazing to see the lineup of such irregular body shapes, sizes, and colours all moving in unison to Ludwig Minkus or Tchaikovsky, when we are so used to seeing the homogenous lines of bodies selected for their similarity by various ‘straight’ ballet companies. It is quite moving to see such a disparate collection of bodies in motion together with such precision and control. This is particularly noticeable in the final piece of the evening – Paquita, after choreography by Petipa – where lines of dancers move in unison or cannonade to Minkus’ tinkling score. There is less comedy than in the previous works, with the dancers focussing more on showmanship than satire. This for me was less interesting than the previous works, but did allow some dancers to really stand out in their solos, such as Kravlji Snepek/Phillip Martin-Neilson’s amazingly high leaps across the stage, Olga Supphozova/Robert Carter’s haughty Margot Fonteyn impersonation, and her partner’s (Mikhail Mypansarov/Carlos Miller) nutcracker thighs. Miller’s large frame is supple and versatile throughout the evening, defying comprehension with some amazing extensions and light delicate movements. Aside from these moments, the last piece seems more earnest than the other works, and seems seduced by the very balletic forms and conventions that were satirised before.

 I am left with a question that goes beyond this work, and has entered recent discussions on performance art, stand-up comedy, and gender politics. Certainly it is the masculine scowls, the awkward bulges in the tights, and the camp (male) attempts to be feminine that make this such a hilarious show. So why is it so funny when men do women’s things? – especially when they do them in the way that women are purported to behave? Our Topp Twins have done an amazing job of reversing this dynamic, but it occurs to me that there are few others. Is it because (as feminist writer Camille Paglia says) there is no mystery to the male body? – only comedy? Is it true that the male body is in fact the first source of laughter? The female body in art history, popular culture and advertising is hardly ever ridiculed or made fun with. Instead it is idealised, fetishised and sexualised. But of its male counterpart there are many traditions of grotesque, ribald, and camp humour – all of which ‘The Trocks’ make great use of to create a madcap evening of entertainment.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

What better thing to do on a Saturday night than go to the ‘thee-a-terr’ to see ballet en drag? 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer