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General
Director
Eugene
McDougle
Artistic
Director
Tory Dobrin
Ballet Mistress
Pamela
Pribisco
Technical
Director
Bob Bursey
Company
Manager
Isabel
Martinez Rivera
Programme
Giselle (Act II)
Pas de Deux
I Wanted to
Dance With You
at the Café
of Experience
Russian Dance
Don Quixote
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Sadler's
Wells
25 September
- 13 October 2001 |
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The ballerina
Cynthia Gregory had short hair near
the end of her career, but when she
performed classical roles she pinned
on a false bun. Such deliberate fakery
might seem ridiculous to the uninitiated.
But then, Odette without the feminine
knot of hair is as unthinkable in the
ballet world as Odette without toe shoes.
Les Ballets
Trockadero de Monte Carlo exists to
mock details like this one, showing
up the deliberate fakery of all dancing.
The troupe – 28 years old by now
– is composed of 14 men who perform
every role, "male" and "female",
in a full range of classical and modern
pieces. In artificial buns, long white
tutus, and toe shoes, a troupe of male
Wilis dances the second act of Giselle.
In Don Quixote,
a corps of male "waitresses"
flirts coquettishly en pointe and frames
a male-male duo of the village beauty
and "her" lover. In various
pas de deux, men playing men lift men
playing women–or vice versa. It
is astonishingly easy at times to forget
that these are drag performances, so
arbitrary are the dance mannerisms,
we realize, that signal "male"
and "female". And gender-bending
is only the first of the jokes. The
troupe's choreography exaggerates details
and includes out-and-out physical punch
lines: a collision in what would be
a cliché-perfect garland, a turn
that goes on a bit too long, an arabesque-train
that runs into itself, a fish-dive that
brings the ballerina dangerously close
to the floor. Ballet mime performed
a hairsbreadth too broadly shows how
little sense the conventional movements–pointing
to the ring finger to indicate marriage,
for example–always made. In these
moments or just after, the dancers glance
knowingly at the audience: Look, they
seem to say, how close "normal"
dancing is to outrageous comedy
The camp mockery
takes in more than just moves and steps.
Fake names and company biographies in
the program present a Maria Tallchief
parody who is the "last of the
great American Indian ballerinas,"
as well as Klaus Youssoupovtu,"
"the first defector whose leave-taking
was accomplished at the virtual insistence
of the defectees." Better–and
subtler–are the program notes for
the dances themselves. In Don
Quixote, we learn, the characters
of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza have
been eliminated, though the audience
"may ... imagine the aristocratic
vagrant and his constant companion ...
wandering about aimlessly and getting
in everyone's way, which in most versions
is all they do anyway." This is
perfectly true, and points out the arbitrary
borrowings of most ballet "plots".
(A note for Giselle
informs us that the décor is
by "Edward Gory"–another
nice touch.)
Big old Bolshoi-style
Russian ballet is the easiest to ridicule.
Almost too easy. In the current program,
Russian Dance
is a one-joke piece about an aging ballerina
who relies on mannerisms when she can
no longer handle her choreography. Its
more obvious comedy seems too broad,
with too little dancing. But the Trockadero
troupe wisely trains its powers of observation
and satire on other forms of dance besides
traditional ballet. I
Wanted to Dance with You at the Café
of Experience is a hilarious
barefoot piece, danced with all the
over-the-top melodrama of "postmodern"
dance's most psychological efforts.
Parody like
this depends for its integrity on high
production values and dancing skill.
All the set and costume details are
just right: the long, Romantic skirts
of the Wilis, the wild dresses of the
Gypsies in Don
Quixote, the exaggeratedly dramatic
lighting in the "café of
experience." And the dancing is
excellent. When the troupe began, the
novelty lay in seeing how well men could
dance en
pointe, and it is still a pleasant
surprise to realize that heavier bodies
can hop around, balance, and turn on
their toes. The dancers have gotten
better and better; their turns are particularly
impressive. In Don
Quixote Manolo Molina (as Fifi
Barkova, as Kitri) even performs a series
of fouettés–the whipping
spins that most female
dancers have trouble with. The group's
light-hearted effects depend on technique
and training that is anything but light.
And the effects
themselves might not be so light-hearted
after all. There are plenty of jokes
in this program aimed at those well
versed in dance and dance history. But
the evening would not be wasted on the
novice balletgoer, either: it is a nice
introduction to what the medium can
do. The dancers and choreographers of
Trockadero clearly know dance–all
sorts of dance, in all its silly and
not-so-silly trappings–with the
inside-and-out thoroughness that comes
of dedication and love. Trockadero calls
itself "a classical ballet company,"
and the adjective is not a joke: that
technique imbued with affection and
skill can even make fun of itself is
a surprising but thrilling result of
classicist principles. The knowing travesty
of Trockadero might be the best form
of tribute.
Siobhan
Peiffer |
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