danceview
a quarterly review of dance

Reviews

Fifi's Back in Town

by Mary Cargill

One of the oddest and most enduring legacies of the Ballet Boom of the 1970’s is Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, the very funny male company who performed at New York’s Joyce Theater for a week in early August. There have been many changes in personnel and management over the years, though the laughter has remained a constant

The year’s program was all classical (Marius Petipa is listed in the program as the Stylistic Guru), and included Act II of Swan Lake, The Dying Swan, various pas de deux, and excerpts from Esmeralda and Paquita. I missed the variety provided by their wonderful modern spoofs, but as always, an evening with the Trocks is much more than a collection of cheap laughs at galumphing pseudo-ballerinas. They know their ballet and many of their funniest effects are the most subtle. I love their sly takeoffs of the preening, pathetic, over-the-hill danseur noble, desperately trying to get his perfectly pointed foot into the curtain calls.

They opened with Swan Lake. Von Rothbart (Velour Pilleaux) is skulking around in a red wig and huge cape, quite reminiscent of the most recent Kirov version. He pulls a pathetic looking swan on with a very noticeable rope, a touch not lost on an audience who had doubtlessly seen one too many touring Swans. The Trocks go back to basics with a pathetic Benno (Igor Slowpokin), who gets insulted by Odette and hissed at by the outraged swans. They also insist on the traditional mime, even if at times they give up and just mouth the words. Odette, the very tall but surprisingly elegant Vanya Verikosa (the Trocks still believe in a pure classical line), towers over Siegfried, danced by Adam Baum, sporting a to-die-for pompadour. His so-called solo, when he walks across the stage, pleased as Punch to have it all to himself, proudly pointing his foot and clicking into vaguely fifth position, is a comic masterpiece. And so is the Cygnet pas de quatre, which ends up as a demented can can.

Fokine’s Dying Swan, too, gets a brilliantly classless interpretation, from the wandering spotlight at the beginning, to the molting feathers, through the last pathetic gasp, and in the best Russian tradition, innumerable and protracted curtain calls.

The Trock’s considerable technique was on display in the Diana and Acteon Pas de Deux, which was danced almost straight, though Acteon (the fluffy-haired Nicholas Khatchafallenjar) put it in its proper prospective by warming up for his solo in a true gymnastic style, shaking his legs, and stretching out his arms. Colette Adae, as Diana, was equally whizbang, spinning out some astonishing double fouettèes.

The Stars and Stripes Forever Pas de Deux, staged by Robert La Fosse somewhat after Balanchine, had its share of fireworks, too, as Olga Supphozova did her spinning top imitation, ably, if warily supported by Mikolojus Vatsisnwhem dressed like a spiffy little barber pole. The intricacies of Balanchine partnering were hysterically parodied, when poor Mikolojus, still supporting Olga, had to dive out of the way of her dangerous, straight-legged pirouettes. As in so many of the Trocadero’s pieces, the more times you have seen the original, the funnier the take-offs.

The rest of the program had longer excerpts from less-well known nineteenth-century ballets, Esmeralda and Paquita, both staged by a bona fide Russian dancer, Elena Kunikova. Possibly because the originals are not as familiar to American audiences as Swan Lake or Giselle (another Trockadero masterpiece), the emphasis was more on technique than the comedy of Swan Lake.

Poor Esmeralda (Margeaux Mundayn) dances droopily, but with impeccable footwork, playing her tambourine listlessly. Her gypsy friends try to cheer her up with a performance guaranteed to generate members for the much needed Society for the Prevention of Gypsies in Ballet.

Romanticism gave way to classicism with the sparkling Paquita finale, with its beautiful variations, danced in an oddly beautiful way by the Trock stars, and with Fifi Barkova, nicknamed the Odessa Chihuahua, performing endless fouettèes and batting her false eyelashes shamelessly at the audience. I did miss the elegant wit of their earlier mock-Petipa productions like their wonderful Pharaoh’s Daughter, featuring "England’s richest most handsome young archaeologist: and the "madcap heiress to the Throne of Egypt". The Trocks, it seems, have followed other companies in emphasizing technique over style, but the audience loved the fireworks, and who can resist a glorious reminder of that lost era when ballerinas roamed the earth, eager to vamp their admirers, and men were there solely to support them, or else!