Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Brighton Dome Concert Hall, March 16 (From The Argus)

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Brighton Dome Concert Hall, March 16

5:12pm Friday 18th March 2011 in Stage Reviews By Louise Schweitzer

Is it a dance? Is it a joke? Is it a girl? No – it’s the Trocks, ballet as you have never seen it, by dancers you are unlikely ever to have met unless you have been lucky enough to catch them on an earlier tour.

Every assumption about classical ballet is challenged by this troupe of brilliantly trained and stunningly virtuoso performers who fly, spin, leap and whirl with the utmost grace and strength but whose gauzy nets are fluttering over hairy chests and whose fouettes, twirling to the dozen, are spun on pointes size eleven. The faux-Russian introduction of Collette Adae and Ida Nevasayneva (with apologies from Miss Notguidenov) warns the audience not to expect tradition, as does the wildlife, quaking and croaking in the Swan Lake.

Wondrously timed comedy is as polished as the lipstick and the hairstyles: ballerinas are nearly dropped, spinning limbs thwack dancers offstage and the dying swan suffers from arthritis and moults. A cygnet from the Swan Lake pas de quatre bounces elastically, to hilarious effect. The whole drags ’n’ dance business is as incongruous as Disney's tutu-wearing hippos in Fantasia but behind the razor-edge parodies of the Trocks is a very masculine strength and purpose, visible particularly in the ingenious choreography of Go For Barocco, pastiche modernism in black tunics which had the audience shouting applause.

And every single step was executed to recorded Tchaikovsky, Glazunov and Bach which meant that not a bar, not a beat, not a heartsecond could be missed.

Perfection en pointe. Keep dancing, girls.