Without pretense

The Ballet Trocadéro de Monte Carlo performed on tour in Moscow.

This noisy, shameless, clown-colorful American theater, in which men on pointe shoes portray ballerinas, already came to Moscow two and a half years ago - then they were invited by the pretentious Grand Pas festival, and they performed at the Bolshoi. Today they were brought by a company that previously dealt not with ballet, but with monstrous pop music, and assigned them to the wretched Variety Theater, where sleepy cashiers reproduce the classic Soviet monologues “there are many of you - I am alone.” Both on the prestigious stage and in the reserve of Soviet humor, “Trox” (as their fans around the world abbreviate the long name of the troupe) looked as if they had only performed there. Thus, the circumstances that arose by chance outlined their habitat, their living space.

Classical ballet - definitely. Learned, danced, with subtleties noted and reproduced, with neat touches. The Trocadero artists are, as a rule, graduates of fairly well-known schools, and their biographies include many companies, from the Lyon Ballet to the Merce Cunningham troupe. Clown element - oh yes, of course. If in the St. Petersburg theater of Valery Mikhailovsky, in which the dancers also portray ladies, half of the repertoire is staged completely seriously and strange awkwardness periodically arises during the performance (“well, yes, they are fluent in women’s technique... but why?”), then the artists of Trocadero They don't pretend to be ballerinas. They portray them - and how!

In “Padekatra”, the fragile, bitchy, evil “Maria Taglioni” has only to look closely at one of the three colleagues for them to be afraid of the “great ballerina”, but do not forget to sourly purse their lips to appreciate all her legendary skill. The four little swans are cracking with the desire of each “swan” to show themselves and, jumping discordantly, create such a resonance that it is surprising that the floor does not collapse. Each of the “artists” is jealous; each jumps onto the stage as if for the last time; and is in such no hurry to leave that the next one almost boils over, trying to send her colleague away.

A dying swan, whose feathers fall off throughout its journey across the stage; the Hungarian grand pas from “Raymonda,” danced with that magnificent dashingness that proves: these artists guess about the existence of Hungary in about the same way as about the existence of Kazakhstan. And at the same time, the legs are placed crooked and askew only when the dancer wants to put them outrageously crooked and askew: like real clowns, the Trox actually know how to do all the tricks no worse than those whom they parody.

And also - like clowns - they have masks. They perform not under their own names, but under female pseudonyms, and each artist has a biography. Here are just a few phrases from these biographies, because Trox are inseparable from their “biographies”. “The first public appearance was at an identification parade at the KGB” (this, as you might guess, is the Russian ballerina, Olga Sapkhozova). “I graduated from the Volga-Dnieper dance school.” “She was given the keys to Minsk and then the locks were changed.” “A truly folk ballerina, although she has a wardrobe of such size that it has its own zip code.” Their very name is also a mask: before the Second World War, the “Russian Ballet of Monte Carlo” thundered, so the Americans used a piece of the name.

Making fun of the stage showdowns, giggling at the morals of the backstage and emphasizing the general absurdity of this activity - classical ballet - the Trox bravely declare their love to him. So they have existed between pathos and clownery for more than thirty years. And they invariably receive well-deserved applause.

Anna GORDEEVA