The Trocks, 21/10/2022
Tchaikovsky : Swan Lake (Act 2)
Tchaikovsky : Swan Lake - Pas de trois (Act 1)
Vivaldi : Vivaldi Suite
Saint-Saëns : The Swan
Glazunov : Raymonda (Act 3, extract)
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte-Carlo
As The Trocks approach their 50th anniversary, this latest tour continues to remind us of the evergreen nature of their humour, and the remarkable quality of the dancing, when you look past the gags and the pratfalls. Their current touring show begins with their signature piece, the second act of Swan Lake, heavily doctored, of course, for the laughs, and still raking them in. This is the first time, I think, that I've actually seen them with a Prince who was taller than the Odette - height mismatches are a running joke in much of their repertoire - but it still worked well. I would have liked to see the lines a little more orderly - yes, of course there's a joke there too, but there's a very fine line between successful and unsuccessful jokes, and the big thing with the Trocks is that the dancing is actually good, when it's not being lampooned. Untidy lines without a very clear reason is taking it just a little too far to the wrong side.
This was most obvious, perhaps, in the Vivaldi Suite, a neo-classical pastiche occasionally inspired by Balanchine. The parody is not as clear as it is in Concerto Barocco, and I was getting echoes of something more sub-post-Balanchine, so to speak, than the master himself, but the geometry was there, yet less than ideally rendered. A little tidying up would not come amiss. Here, however, the height gag was in full force, with a danseur who almost literally fit under his partner's arm when she was on pointe, and the play on balance and manoeuvrability was hilarious.
The central section also included the Act 1 pas de trois, also from Swan Lake, again with a decidedly short danseur to two tall ballerinas, and their equally iconic Dying Swan, a solo for company veteran Robert Carter (aka Olga Supphozova). If the Swan Lake parody sometimes feels a bit stale, that image of the arthritic 'swan' shedding feathers by the fistful will never grow old.
The evening concluded with Raymonda's Wedding, adapted from Act 3 of Glazunov's Raymonda, possibly the last great flowering of the Imperial Russian Ballet. The original ballet in itself offers considerable absurdities, and the wedding is not the least of them. Why should a Provençal princess, marrying a French knight, have a Hungarian wedding, save to allow Petipa to indulge in more 'local colour'? However, the wedding - here reduced mainly to the Pas classique hongrois, with its satellite variations - has always been a very suitable choice for a divertissement programme, and Raymonda's Hungarian Variation is one of the great female solos of classical ballet. I have to say I found this a little low-key, compared to some of the Trocks's finale numbers, but Varvara Laptopova (Takaomi Yoshino, in civil life), who was also this evening's Odette, produced a particularly spectacular third variation that was worth the price of admission in and of itself.
This was not, in my experience, one of the Trocks's best shows, I've left the theatre with a greater feeling of exhilaration in the past. However, the wit, inventiveness and style remain as appealing as ever, and it's still one of the most enjoyable and most entertaining evenings to be had in any theatre anywhere.
[Next : 27th October]