Christmas came and went, leaving New York City draped in shreds of crass consumerism like bits of sodden tinsel. But at the Joyce Theater, with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo in residence, the Christmas spirit was still very much alive.
Since 1974, this intrepid company of men, each of whom dance both female and male roles brilliantly, has been refining their shtick their art, subverting the gender politics of the ballet world, slaying audiences with their technical powers and their unique brand of high/low comedy: sometimes slapstick, sometimes deeply inside-baseball. Program B at the Joyce featured wicked send-ups of warhorses that have long provoked hilarity and admiration; repeat samplings of these classics always seem to offer some new twist to savor.
I was startled to see a toy piano on stage in Yes, Virginia, Another Piano Ballet. Having seen the piece with a grand piano, I wondered how the Boy in Brick (Mikhail Mudkin, nom de guerre for Raydel Caceres) was going to slide the Girl in Lavender (Anya Marx/Shohei Iwahama) under the piano – a hilarious move I remembered from a past performance. Mudkin finessed that nicely. Moments later the Girl in Green (Holly Dey-Abroad/Felix Molinero del Paso) nimbly avoided a collision with the piano by jumping over it. No one actually plays the piano in this ballet. The diminutive prop lent an Alice-in-Wonderland feel to the zany, affectionate take-off on Jerome Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering, in which dancers identified only by the color of their simple country-folk garb alternate playful or pensive moves with maneuvers ripped from Eastern European folk dance. Piped-in Chopin spurred the virtuosic Marx into some blistering pointe work, a frenzy of Bavarian Schuhplattler-style body slapping, and a series of high-kicking relevés that gleefully skewered the tiresome tambourine-smashing-big-toe solo from Esmeralda. Robbins’ bucolic folk seemed barely troubled by something in their past, whereas Trockadero veteran choreographer Peter Anastos lifted the veil on a community beset by petty rivalries, ungainly lifts and faked injuries, whose lives could’ve been chronicled in a reality TV series titled Real Housewives of Dances at a Gathering.
The tiny piano called to mind a photo of iconoclast composer John Cage at a toy piano. His famous collaborations with Merce Cunningham got the Trocks treatment in Patterns in Space. Three dancers in jewel-toned unitards crushed their Cunningham assignments, scampering to the beat of their internal drummers, leaping like arrows, tilting torsos and holding 4th-position relevé balances. A taped score was fortified by the carryings-on of Olga Supphozova/Robert Carter and Boris Dumbkopf/Takaomi Yoshino who wielded toy xylophone, bubble wrap, aerosol spray cans, metal mixing bowls and whisks as if they were sacred vessels.
Carter was having a tremendous night, from his turn as the villainous Von Rothbart in Swan Lake Act II, no match for the sturdy Swan Queen (Colette Adae/Jake Speakman) in a tug-of-war, to a bubbly bridesmaid with fleet pointe work in Raymonda’s Wedding, and the poignant glory of his undying Dying Swan, desperate to retrieve the feathers molting from his tutu. With close to 30 years as a Trock, Carter continues to radiate star power. His ballerina has beautifully sculpted lines. As does the statuesque and refined Elvira Khababgallina/Kevin Garcia in the role of Hungarian princess Raymonda, who gave her famous hand-smacking variation a gravely wistful quality. Her fiancé, the noble knight Jean De Brienne (Bruno Backpfeifengesicht/Felix Molinero del Paso) resembled a 12-year-old pageboy. Perhaps because of the comical height difference, we did not get the handful of big lifts that the wedding scene is renowned for, in particular the shoulder sit gone terribly, yet wonderfully, wrong.
Bungled lifts, pratfalls, feats of excellence and great beauty were the province of Swan Lake Act II. Adae’s pas de deux with the hunky Prince Siegfried (Araf Legupski/Andrea Fabbri) was a marvel of legato and control, with breathtaking dives from supported pirouettes into arabesque penchée. Adae’s elegant foot flickering at the ankle would have played to the slips were the Joyce not such an intimate space. The four cygnets hammed it up with high kicks, and their unison footwork was the bomb. During the famous traveling pas de chats, these tight-knit BFF’s leaned forward to examine their feet as if fascinated by the weirdness of the step (pas de chats really are funny.) Every flock of swans has a black sheep and that night, Marx was the rebel swan, habitually sneaking out of line, injecting a little hip hop action, breaking the fourth wall and spearheading an insurrection against the hapless aristos as they stumbled about with their crossbows.
The Trocks have played rebel swans for the past 50 years, opening up the ballet world – and the real world – with gloriously transgressive visions of the ballet body. Long may we find refuge and hope in their brilliant tweakings of the canon.
