Flawless dancing and a sense of fun are very much on the menu when Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo - affectionately known as the Trocks - make their Wolverhampton debut this month.

Starting life 52 years ago as a downtown drag act in New York City, the all-male troupe are renowned for their hilarious and highly skilled ballet parodies. What’s On recently caught up with the company’s artistic director, Tory Dobrin, to find out more...

A stage phenomenon for more than 50 years, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo - affectionately known as The Trocks - return to the UK and Ireland this spring with their signature blend of virtuoso dance and humour.

The all-male company are renowned internationally for their unique take on classical and modern ballet. And the company’s artistic director, Tory Dobrin, is promising audiences a show to remember when The Trocks stop off in Wolverhampton mid-month: “The most important element for our company is that the audience enjoy themselves. This is absolutely paramount to us. We also wish for audience members to come in expecting to laugh and walk away with a great appreciation of the technical prowess of the dancers, because they are all very accomplished.

“In London, at the Peacock Theatre, I often stand on the stairs and listen to the audience reaction as they exit the theatre. I hear many of them saying ‘We expected to laugh and have a good time, but we didn’t expect them to be such good dancers.’

Formed in New York City in 1974, The Trocks began life as a late-night show on LGBTQ+ stages, but word quickly spread. Over the decades, the company has become an international success story, performing in nearly 700 cities in more than 40 countries.

Tory, who joined The Trocks in 1980 as a dancer and became artistic director in the early 1990s, says audiences worldwide have not only increased in number but also in diversity, so the shows are now popular across the generations: “If you think back to when the company was formed in 1974, and when I joined in 1980, society has very much changed since then in regards to the LGBTQ+ community. Our mission hasn’t changed. We still try to do the best possible show. But now, as we’re more well known, we attract bigger audiences. The biggest change is that, now, we have children in the audience. We never had children at the beginning; it just wasn’t possible in terms of what society accepted.

“People have always come because they’ve known it was going to be a fun evening. Now, they’re also saying ‘Why don’t we bring our children, our grandparents, our LGBTQ+ friends, our local dance people, who will all enjoy it?’ There are so many things about the company that people love.”

Trocks come from across the globe and are highly trained - and they certainly need to be, as they are required to assume a whole host of roles, performing both as male dancers and ballerinas en pointe.
“What we do is actually really difficult and requires a lot of effort and skill,” Tory says. “In order to achieve a good show, we spend a lot of time working at it. Our approach is that one takes one’s personality and then applies it to the role as it is supposed to be in terms of the style of the original ballet.

“We’re not trying to dance as women, because we’re not women. In fact, most women dancers don’t dance alike either; they are all individuals. You take your personality as a male person and you apply it to the roles you do.”

The company have a massive repertoire, and in the UK and Ireland, they will be dancing a choice of programmes featuring excerpts from classics Swan Lake, Paquita and The Dying Swan. Metal Garden, a contemporary work by American choreographer Seán Curran, also features. The aim of each programme is to create a finely balanced performance.

“For us, a good and enjoyable show has variety. We have different lead dancers in every ballet and every act. Then we look for an array of colours in the costumes and an array of music, so one is not seeing or hearing the same thing all night long.

“After that, we look at what we’ve done before. We’ve been to the UK and Ireland quite a lot of times, and we know, for example, that everyone loves Swan Lake. We always have a new cast member doing it, so the humour is always different. We always bring ballets that the audience might know, as well as something new so that they aren’t seeing the same thing every time.”

The tour is presented by Dance Consortium, a group of 24 large-scale UK and Ireland venues which work to bring top-quality international dance to local audiences.

“The audiences in the UK are super boisterous and super fun - I think that’s the tradition of the music hall and pantomime. That’s fun for the audience but also for us. It’s like if you’re at a party and you’re telling a good joke and everyone is laughing.

“We’ve toured the UK a lot, but this is our first time in Wolverhampton. We’re really looking forward to getting to know the city and bringing some good cheer to audiences there.”

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo perform at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre on Friday 15 & Saturday 16 May

By Diane Parkes