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Camping it up
LES BALLETS TROCKADERO DE MONTE CARLO
Peacock Theatre
I RECALL being horrified to discover some time around my
10th year that entry to the top ballet schools was not by ability
or talent but by X-ray. A single irradiated picture of the wrist
and, bang, you could be ruthlessly rejected because of your
potential to be too tall or too short in five years time.
How else could one explain the rigidly petite, Caucasian perfection
of the corps de ballet clones?
So what happens to the tall, short, fat, banana-backed, protruding-bottomed,
dark-skinned, glasses-wearing girl who wanted to be a ballerina
and the boys who wanted to dance like the girls?
Enter the Ballet Trockadero or The Trocks as their loyal and
vocal following know them. They are all men and they are all
professional dancers. But they do all the parts and, as a result,
end up wearing the tutus as well as the tights. They all have
fantastic pedigree and so are, in fact, exquisite dancers.
Some of their work stands alongside the best ballet companies
in the world. The twist is that they are all shapes, sizes and
colours (one even wears glasses) and make it funny and, while
faithful to the ballet’s traditions cock an enormous snook
at all it stands for.
Some of it is quite outrageous – a dying swan that is more
Charles Hawtrey in his most camp Carry On moment, a corps that
falls like dominos when one of their number topples over, an
undignified tussle over the end of performance bouquet. And
that was fairly mild. “Only The Trocks could get away with
that” one audience member behind me said. Quite.
However it is in-escapably true that as dancers they are all
very good. Robert Carter does a particularly impressive run
of fouettes in the colourful closing piece Paquita, and Fernando
Medina Gallego and Lionel Droguet’s pas de deux in Tarantella
to music by Louis Gottschalk was quite marvellous, Droguet being
a strident, energetic male lead.
The jokes are clever and witty although after a while they wore
a little thin with me. The audience, however, guffawed throughout
with, at one point, a lone paean of helpless laughter in the
stalls causing the entire audience to laugh too.
They say their quest is accessibility and I would certainly
have considered this a superb introduction to ballet for a newcomer
with its light, self-mocking touch.
Highly recommended.
Until April 8
020 7863 8222
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