Rejoice and deck the halls! The Trocks are back in town just in time to celebrate the holidays, break boundaries, and shake up the dance world as they have done since 1974.
To anyone who hasn’t enjoyed the unique pleasure of witnessing the iconic dance company Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (aka “The Trocks”), there are two things you should know: one, they’re very fun, two, they’re really good. Another important detail that sets the Trocks apart — the all-male dance company performs both male and traditionally female classical ballet and modern roles en pointe and en travesti.
But a Trocks performance is not a drag show or a garish parody of “dudes in dresses” (I’m speaking to you, Mrs. Doubtfire on Broadway!). On the contrary, each performer is a highly-skilled dancer capable of performing steps and balletic moves so challenging and complicated that prima ballerinas struggle with. The expression (originally a reference to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire) that the female dancer does everything her male partner does only backward and in heels is flipped with The Trocks. It’s gender empowerment of another kind. They are also marvelous actors.
Each dancer plays multiple characters with hilarious pun names like Helen Highwaters, Varva Laptopova, Minnie van Driver, and Ludmila Beaulemova. Then they perform the role (Prince Siegfried or Odette of Swan Lake, for instance) in the character of a wayward Russian dancer. All of that while executing moves from intricate pas de deux partnering to notoriously difficult grand jeté leaps and fouettes that send them spinning like a dreidel.
The Joyce Theater three-week holiday engagement offers two programs: Program A (through December 19) and Program B (December 21-January 2). Program A features the beloved Swan Lake Act II, the bacchanalian Valpurgeyeva Noch (Walspurghisnacht), and the New York premiere of Nightcrawlers.
Nightcrawlers is a dark, moody piece showcasing three couples in a hot cat-and-mouse pursuit filled with passion, drama, and stunning choreography by founding artistic director Peter Anastos. The dance is a hysterical parody of Jerome Robbins’s In the Night set to nocturnes by Frédéric Chopin. It’s a sequel and companion piece that follows Yes, Virginia, Another Piano Ballet, another Chopin/Robbins-inspired ballet Anastos choreographed in the 1970s.
The couples are Minnie van Driver with Boris Mudko (Ugo Cirri and Giovanni Ravelo), Elvira Khababgallina with Nicholas Khatchafallenjar (Kevin Garcia and Haojun Xie) and Maria Clubfoot with Dmitri Legupski (Alejandro Gonzalez and Giovanni Goffredo). The performance is as uproariously funny as it is dazzling to watch, they fling themselves at each other, swap partners, fly through the air, trot like a pony, and are swept across the floor, giving new meaning to the term “nightcrawler.”
Nightcrawlers still contains all of the goofy antics and madcap mishaps of any of The Trocks’ dances, but there is poetry within the parody, depth beneath the dalliances, and genuine romance and chemistry between the couples. The intensity in their eyes, the fury in which they cling to each other, is a shade deeper than the lighthearted humor of most Trocks pieces (even those portraying tragedies and deaths). It feels appropriate in this era where the desire to grasp onto loved ones is spurred by the fear of losing that privilege. Suddenly the stakes are increased exponentially through such a lens.
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