Dance troupe provides spirited role reversal> Les Ballets Trockadero amusing and talented

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, which performed Saturday at the Maine Center for the Arts, gives new meaning to the term “gender bending.” Since the middle 1970s, this New York City-based troupe has had the distinction of being an all-male company that performs and parodies classical ballet EN TRAVESTE, that is, in tutus, in tiaras, and en pointe.

And until you’ve seen a man play the role of Odette, queen of the swans in Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake,” then you simply don’t know how entertaining ballet really can be.

Such ATTITUDE!

What PIQUES!

And where else are you going to see size 11 toe shoes and chiffon-covered dance belts?

Actually, don’t bother answering that last question.

Just recognize that these highly talented dancers perform in a most unusual and amusing forum. And wearing tutus, toe shoes and enough makeup to put Tammy Faye Bakker to shame wasn’t even the half of it. They did everything that male dancers in a company must be able to do, plus nearly everything the female dancers have to do, too.

What really set this cross-dressing group apart, however, was a sense of humor. Occasionally, they fell. Occasionally, a dancer would raise a fist to other ballerinas onstage. And sometimes they let the audience know that toe shoes hurt, that tutus are awkward and silly-looking, and that dancers can have enormous egos (thus the seemingly endless number of bows, curtsies and overdone smiles).

And it only got funnier once you read the program biographies of dancers Vanya Verikosa, Igor Slowpokin, Medulli Lobotomov, Fifi Barkova and others.

But whether the dancers presented “The Dying Swan,” “The Black Swan” or the modern piece (which they hilariously mocked), “I Wanted to Dance with You at the Cafe of Experience,” the most remarkable features were the beauty and skill of the dancers. The rules of ballet have tricked many of us into believing that men don’t and can’t move so gracefully and flexibly, that we can’t expect delicacy out of beefiness, femininity out of masculinity. In the most enjoyable of fashions, Les Ballets Trockadero proved otherwise.

Just to show how convincing these campy dancers were, it’s worth recounting one audience member’s comments at the final curtain call of the full-company piece “Raymonda’s Wedding.” When Elena Kumonova, who played the bride Raymonda, curtsied to the audience, the onlooker said, “She was my favorite,” then paused for a second and added, “I mean, he.”