Gender-Skewing Ballet The Rocks to Celebrate 50th Anniversary at The Joyce

The Joyce Theater Foundation is inviting audiences to enter the satirical, skilled, and slapstick corner of the ballet world with the 50th anniversary holiday engagement of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. Known intimately and lovingly as “the Trocks,” the all-male dance and comedy sensation that has twirled in tutus the world over returns home to New York City’s Joyce Theater  for a raucous season of performances from December 17-January 5.

Tickets, ranging in price from $12-$82 (including fees), can be purchased at www.Joyce.org, or by calling JoyceCharge at 212-242-0800. Please note: ticket prices are subject to change. The Joyce Theater is located at 175 Eighth Avenue at West 19th Street. For more information, please visit www.Joyce.org. 

Haul out the holly, pointe shoes, and belly laughs—Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is set for a grand return to its New York City home for a hilarious holiday romp like never before. For three weeks at The Joyce, the Trocks will celebrate half a century of pirouettes & pratfalls, fouettés & false eyelashes, grand jetés & guffaws in a pair of dazzling programs guaranteed to delight new and returning audiences of all ages. Since 1974, the all-male ballet troupe has donned tutus and tiaras in honor of the grace required for classical dance while forswearing the rigid gender constructs of the form that has been thrust upon the company’s decidedly male bodies. Having won over audiences worldwide—in 43 countries and more than 600 cities, no less—during the course of the last 50 years, the beloved Trocks show no sign of slowing down in their signature blend of technical precision, boisterous humor, and most importantly, each company member’s love of dance.

The first of two programs in the extended holiday engagement boasts the crown jewel of the three-week jubilee: the New York City premiere of rising star choreographer Durante Verzola’s Symphony. Inspired by the demanding endurance, clean technique, and astounding artistry in both dance and design of George Balanchine’s Symphony in C, the Trocks turn this complex and breathtaking masterwork on its head as only they can. Joining the premiere in Program A is Giselle Act II, an enduring company repertory favorite. While its plot involving vampires, resurrection, and a tasteful pas de deux to the death may seem, at first glance, out of character as a holiday offering, the work is imbued with a lighthearted touch that delivers it from the macabre to the merry.

Program B brings with it a trio of repertory pieces that show off the Trocks’ adept comedy and ballet chops in equal measure. The company’s signature work, Swan Lake Act II: Le Lac des Cygnes makes an always-anticipated return to the stage with a phantasmagoria of variations—and birds. The beautiful princess-cum-swan Odette and her Prince Siegfried have been fluttering on the world’s stages for nearly 150 years, yet no other troupe has been able to inject the haughty world of Russian folklore with gender-bent humor like the Trocks. In Yes, Virginia, Another Piano Ballet, choreographer Peter Anastos simultaneously skewers the abundance of choreographic works mentioned in its title and their intention to strip away the artifice of the classical dancer. Rounding out the program, Raymonda’s Wedding—a traditionally confusing divertissement in two scenes—distills the baffling three-act, fifteen-scene Raymonda into only its happy ending, ignoring all its plot intrigues to focus on the titular event. 

The pair of programs deliver unrivaled classical dance precision and technique paired with tongue-in-cheek humor, promising three weeks of holiday entertainment at The Joyce for families to revel in again and again. The performance schedule is as follows: