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Alexandra Tomalonis
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Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

By Alexandra Tomalonis
Special to The Washington Post
February 26, 2000

Partners fight each other for the flowers during the curtain calls. The Prince stops halfway through his solo to adjust his wig, so that his sidekick can take a snapshot. Overeager virtuosos, a wayward gaggle of swans -- nobody understands the absurdities, perils and pleasures of ballet as well as the dancers of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, and nobody makes ballet so much fun.

The Trocks, the troupe of men in tutus that’s been sending audiences home happy for 25 years now, were in fine fettle Wednesday night at the Warner Theatre, presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society. The show was a mix of witty parodies of ballet’s most famous classics -- “Swan Lake,” “Paquita,” and “The Dying Swan” (she molts to death) -- as well as a few contemporary nuggets: Peter Anastos’s “Go For Barocco”--a wonderful send up of George Balanchine’s neoclassical ballets, where the dancers get stuck in the intricate patterns--and Merce Cunningham’s “Cross Currents,” where onstage musicians lovingly play a collection of “found objects”: a water bottle, whistles, bubble wrap.

It’s in the classical selections that the Trocks’ unparalleled sense of the absurd really shines. These swans can be peckish, and break into the breast stroke in the middle of their big waltz; the ballerina directs the partnering and does not hide her impatience with the story; the Prince prepares for his solo with the world’s slowest walk across the stage, stopping at each step to make sure the audience sees his perfectly pointed right foot.

It’s all done with an acid eye for detail, enormous love for the art form, and superb comic timing. Some of the jokes come from the mere sight of large, hairy men dancing in toe shoes, and others from doing the traditional choreography just a little bit wrong -- a flapping wrist here, a twisted shoulder there, dancers missing their cue, but always, always trudging onward. If only the “real” ballet companies were this good!