All-male dance troupe delights MCA audience

ORONO – Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo took the stage at the Maine Center for the Arts for a Sunday afternoon show that can best be described as Trocktacular.

Yes, the troupe exhibited all the grace, all the beauty, all the discipline one would expect from a performance of the highest caliber. But the New York-based, all-male troupe also had that certain something one doesn’t expect to see on a ballerina – chest hair.

Each piece of the four-act, double-intermission program treaded the thin line between virtuosity and ridiculous exaggeration. In some cases, audience members weren’t sure where to look – at Stanislas Kokitch (Tibor Horvath) and the hirsute Margeaux Mundeyn (Yonny Manaure) engaged in an earth-shaking pas de deux? At the tulle-topped corps de ballet, cat-fighting, tripping or just eating an apple in the background?

Case en pointe: A stunning rendition of Arthur Saint Leon’s legendary “La Vivandiere,” in which dirndl-clad Gerd Tord (Bernd Burgmaier) brought the role of Kathi to new heights, literally.

Her – er, his – diminutive partner, Jacques D’Ambrosia (Scott Weber), rose to the occasion with a series of pirouettes that would make a top dizzy. He won over the audience with an act that was a little bit “Ice Capades,” a little bit “Dancing with the Stars,” and totally endearing.

But the real highlight of the afternoon was a molting tour de force by Ida Nevasayneva. In “The Dying Swan,” she has a career-defining moment in the title role made famous by Anna Pavlova. A brief, arm-numbing fall on the feathers did leave this swan with a broken wing, but the aptly named Nevasayneva was unflappable. Until the end, when she stopped flapping. But she was dying, so it was OK.

The feel-good finale, “Raymonda’s Wedding,” was more than OK. It was a sensory whirl of all the usual marriage traditions: garish dresses, men in beanies, a bouquet toss, sparring bridesmaids, wayward groomsmen, but unfortunately, no garter.

But the question remains: Do these guys really know their Irish step from their tango from their pointe? And can they dance? To coin a stage name from the Trocks, Youbetyabootskaya.