TROCK OR TREAT?TROCK OR TREAT? LES BALLETS TROCKADERO DE MONTE CARLO Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is an all-male drag ballet corps parodying the clichés of romantic and classical ballet. It was founded by choreographer Peter Anastos in the United States in 1974 as a group producing small shows for friends, performing late-late shows in JOYCE THEATER NEW YORK, NEW YORK AUGUST 14-27, 2000 Balanchine has a trust. So does Tudor. Is it too late to set one up for Peter Anastos so the precious romps he choreographed for those madcap cross-dressers, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, can be preserved? This all-male troupe, which burst upon New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. in 1974, added three works to its burgeoning repertoire for its Manhattan season, but nothing else on its two programs combined broad humor with sly satire as deftly as Anastos did in Go for Barocco, his spoof of Balanchine. Yes, belly laughs were still regularly detonated, and slapstick was so death-defying that an Elizabeth Streb takeoff must surely be in the works, but for those who savored the company before Anastos departed, its current performances were like being repeatedly jabbed in the ribs instead of knowingly nudged. Everything was performed more broadly than necessary, including Barocco. (I don't recall its dancers jogging around the stage so fiercely before, although Balanchine certainly had elbows pumping in the men's corps during the finale of "Rubies" and at the entrance of the mixed corps of Symphony in Three Movements.) Watching Ida Nevasayneva in The Dying Swan shed a veritable blizzard of plumage plumage, of birds: see feathers. at her entrance and mug from there on out was not as funny as watching an assoluta molt an occasional feather with deadpan hauteur hauteur machine-estimated mean fiber length in a top of wool; the basis for the pricing of tops. ; Anastos knew that any work that peaks at the start has nowhere else to go but down. In Le Lac des Cygnes, Act II, however, the Dance of the Little Swans didn't peak because the cygnets no longer land like a ton of bricks during their pas de chat pas de chat n. pl. pas de chat A ballet jump in which the feet are lifted, one after the other, to the level of the opposite knee. . Having a principal of Les Sylphides come down so heavily that she jolted two nearby corps members off pointe was more like it. (Then the gag was immediately repeated.) The best of the three novelties--also the shortest--was "Russian Dance," staged by Elena Kunikova to music generally cut from Swan Lake. Proudly tossed off by Vanya Verikosa, it found the dancer first enamored en·am·or tr.v. en·am·ored, en·am·or·ing, en·am·ors To inspire with love; captivate: was enamored of the beautiful dancer; were enamored with the charming island. of a handkerchief and eventually trailing more gauzy fabric than Nikiya in Bayadere ba·ya·dere n. A fabric with contrasting horizontal stripes. [French bayadère, from Portuguese bailadeira, dancer, from bailar, to dance, from Late Latin . The Trocks's version of Merce Cunningham's 1964 Cross Currents, staged by Meg Harper, made its best point about midway, when one of its three glum glum adj. glum·mer, glum·mest 1. Moody and melancholy; dejected. 2. Gloomy; dismal. n. 1. dancers told the two "musicians" onstage to stop making so much noise. (They had been assailing a microphone with such "instruments" as an aerosol spray can and a swath of popping bubble wrap, among others.) Raymonda's Wedding, sumptuously costumed by Mike Gonzales and Ken Busbin, came dangerously close to being the real thing. Everyone tossed off pirouettes, and Maya Thickenthighya, like Olga Supphozova in Paquita, did such alarmingly adequate fouettes that one feared a complete Swan Lake must be in the offing. Please, only if Anastos comes back to stage it! |
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