On their toes: Russia's all-male ballet makes North American bow.

When Valery Mikhailovsky brings his St. Petersburg ballet company to the U.S. for their first American tour Oct. 27-Nov. 5, you're sure to see the classical repertoire performed with the purity and passion the world has come to expect from Russian artists. What you won't see, though, are ballerinas: These guys don't need 'em. The eight members of the St. Petersburg National Male Ballet regularly don tutus and pointe shoes to dance traditionally female roles from crowd favorites like Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and Don Quixote.

The company arose just after the fall of the Soviet Union, at a time when both audiences and cultural authorities were ready for a radical departure from the way things had always been done. "Other dancers and I used to kid around, dancing the women's parts just for fun. But we never thought about actually performing them," says Mikhailovsky through an interpreter. "When I decided to form my own company, I had this great group of male dancers to work with, so I just thought, why not create an all-male ballet?" Since its inception in 1992, the troupe has enjoyed wide critical and popular acclaim for their technical prowess, expressive interpretation, and delicate use of humor.

"When a dancer comes to me, the first thing he has to learn is how to dance on pointe," says Mikhailovsky, who received his training at the Kiev Choreography School before dancing 6 years as a soloist at the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theatre and 14 years as a principal in Boris Eifman's St. Petersburg company. He leads nearly all the group's classes and rehearsals himself. No teetering clunkily across the stage for cheap laughs here: The men train extensively to develop proper pointe technique, for which they've earned rave reviews from critics both in Russia and abroad. "It was very difficult at first because no one in our country was making shoes large enough to fit the men's feet," remembers Mikhailovsky. The company now orders them from a workshop that custom-makes pointe shoes especially for male dancers.

Typically, the group's performances are divided into two sections. The first is a series of traditionally "male" dances, meant to be taken at face value and including styles as diverse as tap and tango alongside pieces from the modern and ballet canons. The second showcases the men in women's roles and is meant to be comedic, reminiscent of Trockadero-style parody. Mikhailovsky stresses that, while humor is an essential element of their work, his dancers strive for professionalism above all else. "The parody should never come across as rude or mocking," he says. "What we're doing is serious."

The lineup for the U.S tour follows a slightly altered format, with both halves consisting largely of the men dancing on pointe. The first section, entitled "New Variations on Old Themes," includes Mikhailovsky's interpretations of the party scene from The Nutcracker, the cygnets from Swan Lake, and a variation set to Gershwin's "Summertime." The second half features divertissements from classic ballets, including Kitri's variation from Don Quixote and several well-known pas de deux.

The 10-day tour is produced by Victor Shulman, a Russian impresario who has spent the last 25 years introducing the West to Russian superstars like pop diva Alla Pugacheva and dissident singer/songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky. It will include stops in California, Illinois, New York, Boston, and Ontario, Canada. www.maleballet.spb.ru/about.html.