Dancers Over 40 Presents LES BALLETS TROCKADER DE MONTE CARLO, 3/15

Over 40 years of dance and comic entertainment will be fêted asDancers Over 40 features Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo at the organization's first panel of 2017: "Over 40" years of Dance and Comic Entertainment: The History and Legacy of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. Entertainer and raconteurextraordinaire, Richard Skipper, hosts the presentation. The event, celebrating the "Trocks" rich history and legacy, will be videotaped and donated to the Jerome Robbins Dance Collection at Lincoln Center's Library for the Performing Arts.

The Spring Panel includes Trocks Artistic Director Tory Dobrin, moderating, with special guest Trocks Roy Fialkow, Peter Richards, RoBert Carter and Raffaele Morra, who've appeared in the company over the years from 1979 to the present. Act I will feature each dancer, with his own special story to tell about the Trocks, and how they became a well-established company dedicated to the serious art of dance - with liberal dollops of exquisite comic entertainment. Act II of the presentation will continue the panel, with added discussion of Paquita, and how the company creates its parody, including demonstration.
A lively Q&A session will end the program.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is a company of professional male dancers performing a full range of the ballet and modern dance repertoire in faithful renditions of the manners and conceits of those dance styles. The comedy is achieved by incorporating and exaggerating the foibles, accidents, and underlying incongruities of serious dance. The company was founded in 1974 by a group of ballet enthusiasts, first performing in late-late shows in Off-Off Broadway lofts. After positive reviews in The New Yorker, the New York Times and the Village Voice, the company became an artistic and popular success. Audiences world-wide love seeing the heavy bodies of men delicately balance on toes as swans, sylphs, water sprites, romantic princesses, and angst-ridden Victorian ladies, with an artistry that enhances rather than mocks the spirit of dance as an art form.

Richard Skipper is a popular award-winning and critically acclaimed entertainer, theatre historian, writer, and arts advocate who has appeared on major stages from coast to coast. He is an MC, host, interviewer and lecturer, and is currently writing a book celebrating the landmark musical, Hello, Dolly!

Dancers Over 40 was created as an all-volunteer, membership-driven non-profit arts organization dedicated to preserving the History, Legacy and Lives of the mature creative community, while sharing knowledge with the younger generation just beginning their careers. The organization presents seminars, dance concerts, awards events and panels celebrating the dance greats of the Golden Years of Dance and the DO40 members who worked with them. http://www.dancersover40.org

(Photo: Zoran Jelenic)