CMU School of Drama


Friday, December 30, 2016

Meet the Amazing Male Ballerinas Dancing En Pointe in Drag

The Creators Project: The pain and prestige of performing en pointe is usually reserved for female ballet dancers, but all-male dance troupe Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (known as The Trocks, for short) have braved the bruises and blisters of pointe shoes for more than 40 years. Dancing on their toes since 1974, The Trocks perform playful, entertaining parodies of classical ballet en travesti, a theatrical term for dressing as the opposite sex.

1 comment:

Ali Whyte said...

I am always up for different ways for people to express themselves. I really appreciate this article because it presents the group from so many perspectives: the group itself, general audience reaction, show structure, and trained (ballerinas) audience reaction. I love that trained dancers who watch this performance recognize that the performers are technically correct and use their training while also making it enjoyable and entertaining to watch. I think using drag as a means of challenging ballet gender roles is awesome. It allows these dancers to experience, like they said, the female perspective in ballet not just by themselves in a studio somewhere, but in a performance setting where they can express themselves to audiences that are there to see what they do. I especially appreciate the humor aspect and how they manage to take such a typically clean, elegant, and precise art form, stay true to all of those core values, and still produce something that is completely their own.