Ballet in drag with the Trocks

(The Trocks in Swan Lake, Act II at the Carpenter Center in Long Beach last Thursday.)

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is a fabulous, loving send up of ballet and of grand diva performances in general. From the outrageously made up male dancers in drag with chest hair peeking out of their tutu bodices to the onstage antics, the comedy is slapstick and fun for everyone. But what elevates it from pure schtick is that all of the comedy sits on a rock solid foundation of dance technique and ballet knowledge: this company is the real deal when it comes to the dancing, and their parodies and homages to the quirks and conventions of ballet are so right that dance fans find just as much interest in the act.

First of all, the Trocks (as they are affectionately known) are not from anywhere remotely near Monte Carlo - the New York based company's name is a riff on the myriad Ballet Russe companies that zigzagged the country before 1950, pretenders and contenders to Sergei Diaghilev's famed, original Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The repertory mimicks the rep of the old companies, with lots of Swan Lake and Les Sylphides, lots of showpiece pas de deux, here and there a new work. All lovingly mocked, of course. The dancers all have comically grand Russian "names" like Svetlana Lofatkina, Olga Supphozova (say it out loud) and Natalia Notgoodenov.

At the Carpenter Center in Long Beach on Thursday (Feb 7), the program opened with Act 2 of Swan Lake, featuring a grand diva Russian ballerina named Larisa Dumbchenko and a scrappy corps de ballet whose dancers kept running into each other. In the pas de deux, Dumbchenko mugged for applause every time she finished a turn or popped into arabesque, and shrieked when her wimpy Siegfried nearly dropped her out of a difficult lift. In the famous Little Swans dance, one dancer kept falling out of sync because she kept mugging and trying to stand out of the crowd - higher kicks and bigger jumps, to the dismay of her three other swans (watch it on YouTube).

The antics were fun because they played up the absurdities of formal ballet - this wasn't in Thursday's performance, but last time around in Les Sylphides, a bored corps member standing still on the side of the stage whipped out an apple and started munching while waiting for the principal's solo to finish. Here in Swan Lake, I liked their ridiculous take on ballet mime (watch on YouTube): Dumbchenko's Odette uses wildly gesticulating though correct ballet mime to say that an evil man has captured her, but Siegfried stares blankly back, then raises his hands in confusion to say, "What the hell did you just say?" - funny, because who understands ballet mime either unless it's explained in advance?

Later on in the program, there was The Dying Swan, a gala solo unrelated to Swan Lake that famous (real) Russian ballerinas perform to show their sensitivity and poetic, rippling arms. The solo can be quite melodramatic in its portrayal of a slowly expiring swan, and the Trocks' performance enhances that: as the Swan bourrees across the stage, her tutu molts feathers all over the place, and the performer weeps dramatically and audibly, like she's having a temper tantrum, all while performing the steps exactly as they are (watch it, again, on YouTube). Then, at the end, almost as much a part of the ballet as the dancing, the Trocks ballerina takes a grand four curtain calls, and has to be yanked off the stage.

My favorite parody was Vivaldi Suite. Choreographed by the company, it was a letter perfect riff on George Balanchine's neo-classicism. The audience laughs simply because the leading couple is a monstrously tall female ballerina and a very, very short male cavalier. I found the piece even funnier because the Balanchine-isms were all there, completely correctly: the ultra feminine light carriage of the arms, the small jete with back leg bent seductively a la Suzanne Farrell in Tzigane, or that grand plie on pointe in second position, used so frequently in Agon and countless other Balanchine black and white ballets.

Other works on the program were a shameless display of the Trocks' prowess as dancers. Not that they have the ease and pliancy of dancers in the top companies, but their technique is no joke. In fact, their being men gave an extra athletic flash to all of the ballerina dancing: quick, bold attack and dazzling, weightless jumps that seemed to pause in the air. Two couples performed the pas de deux from Le Corsaire and Don Quixote, and the women were just as athletic as the men, shifting the bravura focus equally between the two partners. These two pas de deux were performed with virtually no extra shenanigans, just a guy in drag looking kinda funny, doing really good dance tricks. Majisimas, the closing ballet on the program, was performed entirely straight faced, like a full on real ballet. As a tribute to Cuban Ballet, they captured the mood perfectly, but I wasn't entirely sure whether it was supposed to be truly funny, or if they just wanted to show us that yes, they all really can dance a ballet for real.

The troupe has gotten serious attention, with essays in The New Yorker by their resident dance critics, starting with Arlene Croce up to today's Joan Acocella and regular engagements at major dance venues like Sadler's Wells in London. While poking fun at ballet's conventions, they show just how much they love it by performing it so well. It's a refreshing energy to see every now and then, and a lot of fun, too.

More clips on YouTube: Some bravura dancing from Paquita, and a Balanchine parody - different from the one above but no less funny - called Go for Barroco, part 1 and part 2.