Ballets Trockadero Has Crossover Appeal

Since we all have to learn to perform behavior that’s appropriate to our genders, and since ballet has the hyper-femininity market cornered, it’s not surprising that Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo has been able to dine out on the spectacle of men in tutus since 1974.

So on Saturday night, ballerinas with names like Maya Thickenthighya once more swanned around the Marsee Auditorium at El Camino College in Torrance. It turns out that femininity is just a pose--and for the Trocks, some angles work better than others.

As usual, there were cleverly florid program bios, explaining that the quintessential Trock has “inexplicably risen to stardom” dancing the Sour Cream Fairy and the like. And “Swan Lake,” with frog ribbits overlaid on the taped Tchaikovsky, with the occasional swan becoming road kill, was really fun.

But sendups of ballet styles didn’t always come off. “Vivaldi Suite” never got a bite out of Balanchine (each ballet is based on particular choreography); it looked more like clunky guys who couldn’t quite get the clean lines required. “Paquita” also suffered, with its long passages of “straight” dancing without jokes. This is part of the Trocks’ real reverence for their roles--they often overlook great moments to satirize ballet conventions to try to be really, really good ballerinas.

Occasionally, this serious gender-jumping was amazing--no joke. Tatiana Youbetyabootskaya (Bart De Block) came darn close to just plain ballerina brilliance, with his ace balances, multiple turns and well-tempered port de bras. On the comic end, Ida Nevasayneva (Paul Ghiselin) had fine moments as a molting Dying Swan with low back pain.

But the Trock agenda is only partly laughter: It’s also crossing over, so that more amusing--and more radical ballet satire--never emerges. Only a moment is spent in a “swan rebellion,” for instance, when the bird-like creatures turn into a street gang who’ve had enough of domineering princes. It’d be nice to see more of that.