'We're just a bunch of clunky guys in tutus'

by JUDITH MACKRELL for the Guardian

However, Kristos, a 55-year-old travel agent, is less happy: "I expected more comedy," he growls. "If I wanted to see ballet, I would go and see a proper ballet company." This is a problem the Trocks can often stumble into when they dance in a new city. While the company justly pride themselves on the fine line they tread between humour and homage, to some bewildered refuseniks, the material comes across as neither. As dancer Raffaele Morra (aka Lariska Dumbchenko) admits: "We are first of all a dance company. We don't have enough jokes to be a pure comedy act. But at the same time, we are still just this bunch of clunky guys in tutus."

published: September 20, 2006

Fun and frolics with the ballet masters
by DAVID CHEAL for the Daily Telegraph
published: September 21, 2006

Here, on the first night of a short season at the Peacock Theatre, following their triumphant run at Sadler's Wells earlier this year, they had the audience in stitches from the start. The curtain rose, and an absurd tableau presented itself: a bunch of big, sinewy men in full ballet regalia, fluttering their enormous false eyelashes.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
by SANJOY ROY for the Guardian
published: September 22, 2006

Is ballet a laugh? It can be many things: virtuoso, transporting, brassy, bewildering, beauteous - and sometimes it can tickle the ribs. But funny? As in ha-ha? Rarely.

Les Ballets Trockadero, Peacock Theatre, London
by CLEMENT CRISP for the Financial Times
published: September 20, 2006

I love them. I love their love of ballet, which drives them ever onward, and their respect for ballet’s past: in their stagings the right steps are there, even if not always rightly danced. I love their affection for the idea of a ballerina as a rampant monstre sacré rather than the present breed of pink sugar mice who tread their ever-so-nice way through the classics. And I love their mocking acceptance that ballet can be so up its own tutu that it is, in any case, self-parodistic. (Recent “serious” performances of The Dying Swan and of Balanchine choreography have taken place on the far side of a giggle.)