Arlene Croce, the great American dance critic who wrote for The New Yorker from 1973 to 1996, died on Monday morning, the day before Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo lifted the curtain on its December season at the Joyce Theater.
Many of Croce’s reviews — witty, biting and full of trenchant observations, both harsh and beautiful — were works of art themselves, including one from 1974 about the debut of Les Ballets Trockadero in a loft on 14th Street. The stage was the size of a handkerchief. The corps de ballet was a lonely five dancers.
New York, Croce wrote, “‘the dance capital of the world,’ has long needed a company of madmen to break us all up.”
Fifty years later, the madmen are still at it. Even as the all-male company has grown in size and in repertory, it still holds onto its dilapidated essence: Russian glamour as it frays around the edges. Could it sometimes use a spritz more? In the case of its newest dance, “Symphony,” a strong world premiere, it’s likely.
Laughter still ripples during performances by the Trocks, as they are known, but so does admiring applause. Alongside jokes is pointe work (the province of women in traditional companies) that seems to improve each season. The Trocks, though, can be more entertaining in male roles than female ones. The foppish prince, the hapless noblemen — humor is poured into them, while in the more demanding ballerina parts, some of the dancers place too much focus on making their technique bright and light. Equalizing the space between comedy and serious dancing is a delicate balance, but that’s what makes the Trocks sing.
On Tuesday, the first of two programs, the company presented a tight double feature: its vampiric version of Act II of “Giselle,” with décor by Edward Gorey; and “Symphony,” a take on George Balanchine’s “Symphony in C.” In “Symphony,” the rising young choreographer Durante Verzola presents his first Trockadero ballet, a brisk, rigorous and musical romp through selections by Charles Gounod.
“Symphony in C” is set to music by George Bizet, who was a student of Gounod’s; in Verzola’s ballet, you hear echoes of Bizet’s score, just as in the choreography, you see fragments of Balanchine’s. As the dance breezes by in ways both knowing and innocent, it’s clever and clean.
There could be more of a nudge toward comedy — technical challenges seem to overshadow the parody of it all — but when the humor arrives, it has an unforced sheen. The most joy is found in the first movement, led by Andrea Fabbri, whose broad chest and linebacker physique is at odds with his tutu. (The dancers each have a male and female persona, and here Fabbri is in ballerina mode as Tatiana Youbetyabootskaya.) But he owns it. When he gets caught in the middle of ballerina crossings, his fear and increasing irritation are overcome, showbiz style, with a gleaming, generous smile.
“Symphony” follows the structure of “Symphony in C,” including its romantic pas de deux in the second movement. Jake Speakman (Colette Adae) and Raphael Spyker (Medulli Lobotomov) play it straight, largely — unless Spyker’s shellshocked expression was part of the comedy? That wasn’t completely clear.
Kevin Garcia (Elvira Khababgallina) — leggy and refined in the third movement — and the ever buoyant Takaomi Yoshino (Varvara Laptopova) in the fourth brought impressive displays of technique and musicality. But it was a delight, and even with a much smaller cast than “Symphony in C,” in which the rows of dancers seem to stretch on for days, Verzola, through structure, produced a ballet of clarity, verve and effervescence.
In “Giselle,” which led the program, the Wilis — women who died before their wedding days — are vampires led by Myrtha (Laptopova), their grim, glowering queen. Giselle (Shohei Iwahama’s Anya Marx) is now a Wili, while Albert (Raydel Caceres’s Mikhail Mudkin), the man who deceived her, visits her grave and eventually ends up joining her in her coffin. It’s kind of a happy ending.
In between, mayhem ensues as the Wilis, after forcing Hans, a gamekeeper who loved Giselle, to dance to his death, now try the same with Albert. Albert is blond and perfectly idiotic with red lips that are more gleaming than Dorothy’s ruby slippers. At one point he grabs the cross that stands over Giselle’s grave and waves it at the Wilis, who cower, somehow both annoyed and distressed.
It’s the Wilis who steal this ballet. Grimacing as they stand in their rows or clawing the air with angry paws, they waver between irritation at their male invaders and devotion toward Myrtha, who shoos them off like mosquitoes. They rush ridiculously across the stage with pointed index fingers, they hop in arabesque, they land hard. They are ghouls in pointe shoes. The program was topped — like a swirl of whipped cream — with a curtain call in which the Trocks kicked it up to “New York, New York.” It was, to all, a good night.
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