Meet the Trocks: Men, Tutus and Talent

Dec. 19, 2008— -- Ballet is a lot of things. It's elegant. It's graceful.

It's usually not hairy.

But Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is anything but a typical ballet troupe. For one, the dancers all are men. The dancers in tutus, feathers and heavy make-up? Those are men too.

Fernando Medina Gallego plays Odette the Swan Queen in Swan Lake, but says his performance isn't the traditional Swan Queen ballet enthusiasts are used to.

"I wouldn't play Odette like any other woman that you've seen because I'm not a woman," he said. "So I think that's the biggest difference that you would find."

Granted that is a big difference. But not the only difference. Because what the Trocks are really trying to do is find the "funny" in ballet.

"Oh, there are plenty of opportunities," dancer Raffaele Morra said. "From the simple mistakes of the ballerina that's on the wrong side of the stage to the just exaggeration of the style … or you know many, many things that can happen on stage that are funny. Also, of course, we are men."

Trading Softness for a Bit of Naughty

The Trocks, determined from the start to poke holes in ballet, were founded in 1974 as an offspring of the gay pride movement New York City. They are now at the Joyce Theatre in New York City.

Tory Dobrin, the Trocks' artistic director, said ballet is ripe for satire because it takes itself so seriously.

Take a traditional performance of Swan Lake, for example.

"You're looking at swans, beautiful women with a softness, a finesse, a light energy, accomplishing the idea that love should triumph," Dobrin said. "That's what you're looking for and hopefully you're swept away into one of those places inside of you that first found love and maybe disappointment."

But the Trocks trade that softness and finesse for naughty swans.

"We're developing more of the character of the characterization of the swan queen and the prince for instance," Dobrin said. "The swans that we have in the chorus are like fractious birds up to no good."