★★★✰✰ This year, the Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo’s visit could not have been better timed. As a new Covid variant closes in, we all need a little cheering up...
Tag - Trocks
★★★★★ Thank you, Royal Ballet, for giving so much pleasure in trying times.
★★★★★ A wildly surreal comic turn involves a dog riding a bicycle, both cunningly choreographed. He's actually a tractor driver in disguise, disrupting sexual assignations.
★★★★✰ The choice of works emphasised ensembles more than individuals. It was interesting to see large numbers of young men dancing together, as well as a more usual female corps de ballet.
★★★✰✰ Big Dance Theater company, based in New York, set about turning Samuel Pepys priapic confessions into a dance theatre piece, mashing up past and present....
★★★★✰ The curtain calls for Robert Carter's "Dying Swan" are nearly as long as the ballet itself and just as funny.
★★★★★ The Trocks' version of Swan Lake (or Lac, as it used to be known) restores some Soviet era removals. Benno, the hero's best friend and supporter, is back, as are mime sequences, mostly mystifying the participants...
Next month - September - The Trocks open their 2018 UK tour which runs through to November and covers many towns and cities across the land. A good primer on all things Trockadero as Diane Parkes speaks to Raffaele Morra, whose been with the company these last 17 years...
★★★★✰ Devon Teuscher has done her time, and the results are breathtaking...
Some dance can be really thought provoking and that seems to have been the case with Tero Saarinen's "Morphed" - at least for Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer who recently caught up with the work at the Joyce in New York.
The Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards for 2016 were presented today at a ceremony in London, hosted by Kenrick ‘H2O’ Sandy MBE and Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante, the creative team behind the highly successful dance company, Boy Blue Entertainment.
Lynette Halewood with her personal selection of London dance memories this last year…
So a tip to the wise up front - see them in London while you can or catch them on their subsequent UK tour....
The Trocks (Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo) programme 2 opens shortly at London's Peacock and Dave Morgan was at the photocall for us when they ran their Don Quixote...
Gallery by Dave Morgan...
The Tribute bill is a well-chosen one... The season has been so short that the dancers haven’t had time to grow into their roles. They look as though they’re remembering instructions rather than relishing the ballets.
On the eve of a UK tour 5 Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo ballerinas reveal all...
...it’s that ambiguity in their performances — the tension between seriousness and satire — that makes the company such a joy to watch.
It is refreshing to see Jiri Kylian’s repertoire performed by a mostly modern company, and the two works of his that completed the programme were danced with an encouraging sense of theatrical flair.
The Cuban schooling of Hopuy is impressive and his variation was expertly danced, including the trademark Cuban flicking over of the take-off leg in a jeté en tournant...