Les Ballets Eloelle, Les ballets Him-or Her, Les Ballets L.O.L !

What can I say? The chaps on stage work hard, display skill and are all very charming, but to what end? In honesty, I am not the right demographic for this show, and the seats are uncomfortable.   I acknowledge that this review does not represent the experience of those in the audience who truly loved it.

I didn’t enjoy it, but I also didn’t hate it. It all just felt a bit off.

I have nothing against drag performance.. New generation performers like rapper Mykki Blanco are leading the drag/queer art/gender-fuck charge, making skilful and honest work that has ‘mainstream appeal’ without cashing in on too many clichés that we associate with standard drag performance. Call me ‘post gay’ if you like, but I have the feeling that this show relies too much on its audience being sort of people who find a man in a dress inherently funny, which to most civilised people, it no longer is. To be horribly assumptive, the audience is a pretty conservative looking crowd and I cant help but wonder how many of them will have a good night out courtesy the men in tutus, but not speak out against inequality when it comes to debating marriage law in New Zealand.

If you have seen the promotional material you have more or less seen the show.

Although one could be hopeful that M.I.T. will deliver more than what might be expected, there are no real surprises. It is more about clowning than dancing, and I don’t mean that as a criticism. It is what it is. The gags are milked like the village goat, but it is all so prudish, so unsexy, not at all what you would expect from a company of hot gender-bending comedians who are also skilled ballet dancers. It reminds me of one of those educational shows that visit primary schools.

I often find it funny, but occasionally I close my eyes just to make time pass.

Director, choreographer and Dancer Victor Trevino takes the comedy to a tragic limit that should be the bench-mark for the rest of the cast. A veteran of the genre, he has a lovely smile and a talent for expressing the poultry nature of his dying swan.

The dancers don’t do much wrong. They execute all the moves with eyelashes flapping like chickens caught in hot glue. Their meaty legs couru en pointe like Ballet soldiers marching off to Ballet war. There is some quite good dancing – though not exactlyt good Ballet, but some of the movement in space is strong, graceful and purposeful. Overall, though,  a higher standard of execution would be welcome.

The venue is not great. Of course the segment of the stage that clunks so rudely to betray the landings of the not so slyph-like Ballerinas is not their fault. The seats are those cramped conjoined plastic things that force you to be so physically intimate with a complete stranger that you are nearly sharing brainwaves. On the flat stadium floor a big head in front of me obscures about $9.40 worth of my view. It is an expensive show at  $94.00 for a premium adult seat. The show has value, but not at that cost in this venue.

At the unnecessary intermission there is no rush to the bar. The audience sit looking a bit forlorn in the  atmosphere-lacking CBS Arena.

There is too much mugging for applause and it kills the momentum of the show, forcing you to clap longer than you want to – and  I get the impression that the applause would have died on several occasions if not for relentless prompting from the performers. The roar of approval whenever something vaguely virtuosic is achieved suggests that the dancers are capable of more than is on display and could earn their applause outright with a little more graft.

That said, I can see how it would all work better in a different venue, different audience, nicer weather.

I wish I could have enjoyed it more.

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He may be 52 but Victor Trevino aka Nina Maximova is a danseur noble, a prima ballerina, with the most elegant legs in the male comedy ballet business and the mobile face of a natural clown.  Fairly late in the first half, enter Maximova trailing feathers all over the stage, employing every trick in the book and looking more like a chicken than a swan as she lowers, knees forward, still en pointe, flicking her tutu with  feathers flying and oh, such a tragic face, false lashes flickering and wig rigidly in place.

Do Anna Pavlova and Camille Saint-Saens look down from their arts Elysium and join the Theatre Royal audience in peals of laughter at this triumph of drollery, Dying Swan?  It seems very likely – how could they not?  Anyway, she is so pleased with her somewhat solicited curtain calls that she has to be dragged off backwards!

Again, as Odette in an unusual and truncated interpretation of Swan Lake, Maximova excels, though she risks being upstaged by a large white plastic swan, towed in to view by Prince Siegfried/ Randy Herrera aka Lucha Libre-Villa, him of the slightly ridiculous pants.   Congratulations to whoever designed the backdrop palace, an overgrown with ivy, rack and ruin – most apt.  

Costume of the night award goes to wicked sorcerer von Rothbart danced by Bario Ehran aka Baris Nikow.  Resplendent in a cloak of silk, a gorgeous preening male peacock tail, he does his best to appear venomous but is far too pretty to be really menacing.

The Dance of the Little Swans/Cygnets is not quite right, just misses and is  delicious.  Holding each other’s crossed hands – at least for most of the  time- they swoop their heads – swoop, swoop – and thump along with worried faces.  The chunky Oswaldo Muniz aka Cookie Krum is extremely male in his tutu, and droll with it.  At the other extreme, Philip Joseph Sicat aka Elsie Irkland, is so pretty and such a beautiful dancer it is hard to believe he/she is  really a man. 

The troupe touch and miss hands, paw the ground like a horse, kick backwards  at fellow dancers, groan out loud with “strained backs”, let out wails when  lifting, collide with the proscenium wall, lose their way in and out of stage entrances and exits, and employ every ounce of foolery to bring tears  of laughter to the by now entranced audience. Interspersed are grand jetes, pirouette a la accordes, ballons, and fouettes and plies a plenty. 

It takes great skill to dance so beautifully, so  athletically, and at the same time be gut-wrenchingly funny. 

The company heads south from here as part of a grand New Zealand tour — then north again. They offer a great night out for lovers of dance who love to laugh. 

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