On the chilly first night of February, Queen Elizabeth Theatre was jam packed with eager audience members awaiting the Trocks’ take on classical ballet performances, including Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Pugni’s Le Grand Pas de Quatre, and Gounod’s Valpurgeyeva Noch. A comically nasal voice broke through the hum of the attendees, announcing dancers Mikhail Mypansarov, Jacques d’Aniels and Maya Thickenthighya. The audience erupted in laughter at the drag-inspired names – the jovial tone was set by the time the red curtains started rising.

Opening with Swan Lake, the 40-minute first act was a stunning display of balletic force, accompanied by a well-known rise and fall of strings and horns. Prince Siegfried and the Swan Princess floated effortlessly across the floor, bending their bodies in tight back scales and arabesques. As the supporting group of swans poured in however, one of them was noticeably clumsy. She slid into the scene on her belly, running into the other swans, and making a mess of the group’s swelling shapes and formations. Timed to the punches and frills of the musical ballad, the dancers punctuated these mishaps with comedic responses. They weren’t restricted to plastered-on, artificial smiles; they shouted, whined, got angry at each other and deliberately put their hands in the wrong places—reveling in the audience’s joyful reactions. 

Certain strenuous dance moves throughout the act were followed by an exaggerated sigh of relief, while others seemed entirely effortless. The final sequence of Swan Lake featured the Swan Princess’ infamous dizzying set of fouettés— the dancer easily maintained balance and poise until the final pose. Garnering some of the most laughs however was the sequence of the dying swan, a solo showcase opening with a spotlight that (deliberately) could not find the dancer. When the flood of light finally met her, it revealed a large feathery tutu and a charming trail of loose pieces that traced her movements. Her large, sweeping stomps while frantically collecting the feathers contrasted the rest of her lovely adagio. The scene ended, to the surprise of many, with the swan’s death gone wrong—the dancer couldn’t help but fall over herself as she tried to maintain the animal’s resting pose. That didn’t stop her from re-appearing after the curtain closed to cheekily ask for more applause, though, and the audience met her demands without hesitation.

The second act, Le Grand Pas de Quatre, began with a vignette of four dancers, arranged as though they made up the canvas of a painting. Featuring three younger ballerinas and an older matriarch-type— who were understood to be the four best ballerinas of the romantic age—the proceeding choreography highlighted each of the character’s unique balletic qualities. Meanwhile, Madame Taglioni, the oldest (and probably least-skilled) of them all, stood proudly above them, clear in her conviction that age triumphs over actual ability. 

The act continued with death glares from Taglioni pointed toward the other dancers, who fell humbly to her perceived prowess. While her attitude evoked eye-rolls and annoyed huffs from the trio, they accept that she’s the queen. After each dancer finished their set, Taglioni commanded them off the stage to begin her own mediocre sequence. As expected from the tyrannical character, she forced each of the dancers to bow down to her as if she was the goddess of dance incarnate. The teasing and tension of this act finished as it started—the curtain closed around the four ballerinas’ still composition.

The second shorter intermission let the audience briefly prepare themselves for the final act, a beautiful exposition set in ancient Rome involving the entire roster of dancers. Inspired by the Bolshoi Ballet’s Valpurgeyeva Noch, nymphs, fauns and maidens set the stage for an acrobatic display by Bacchus and a Bacchante. Complex compositions and formations framed the movements of the two primary dancers, accompanied by colourful, flowing costumes that pleasurably danced across the viewers’ plane of vision. Here, the nymphs and fauns provided comedic relief, often swarming the central figures with contemporary dance stylings that contrast traditional ballet.

This final section of the Trocks performance united all three acts and reinstated the unique and innovative approach the studio takes toward the discipline of ballet. In a series of exacting and meticulous choreographies, the detailed skills required to execute each dance step were complemented by implemented moments of comedic relief, structured in such a way to provide audiences with a delightful array of experiences. We marvelled at the artistic display of bodies, costume and movement, which culminated in an affective visual and sonic continuum that provoked as much laughter as it did awe. Les Ballets Trockadéro de Monte Carlo takes on the monumental task of making century-old ballet performances exciting for a contemporary audience, and does so with a sharp wit and an ingenious reconfiguration of what it means to experience, gawk at, and appreciate the discipline of ballet.