Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
Mary Brennan, Five stars
What the Trocks don't know about timing – the calculated prat-fall of a swan, the wrong-footed disruption of ensemble synchronicity, the exaggerated miff of an upstaged diva – could be told in a second.
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo – to give them their full cod-grandiose moniker – have, across some 40 years, honed the little, and largeing it up, details of comedic burlesque. They also know, however, when to put the joking aside and just dance: on pointe, they honour their tongue-in-cheek ballerina names and deliver luscious, precise technique with an uncanny flair that the old masters of Russian ballet would applaud.
These two sides of the Trocks house style combined gorgeously in the Odette of Philip Martin-Neilson during the broad-humoured Swan Lake Act II that opened the programme. His Swan Queen was a bit of a secret minx, given to exasperated sideways glances, half-shrugs and glimmers of petulance – nicely camp in accent, but all the funnier for not being over-egged. In a split-second turn, the drollery gave way to seriously pure, expressive dancing, with Odette's solo a tour de force.
Like Chase Johnsey – the pert and poised ballerina in Le Corsaire pas de deux – or the fire-cracker Kitri of Carlos Hopuy in a rompingly condensed Don Qhixote, Martin-Nielson clearly relishes the challenges, the finesse, the power of burnished pointe-work. As do we, when it is danced by such outstandingly talented ballerinas. Lazlo Major's prowess – not least in scooping Johnsey's ballerina into high lifts in Le Corsaire – was a reminder that the Trocks don't ignore virtuoso masculinity.
We'll count the months until they return – lucky Inverness can enjoy all the above and more tomorrow (Friday) night.
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