Tory Dobrin
Artistic Director of the Trocks

By Mary-Ann Russon • UrbanWire

New York's all-male comic ballet company Les Ballets Trockadero De Monte Carlo (commonly known as The Trocks) was in town last week for a special and sold-out 5-day performance, and of course UrbanWire jumped at the invitation to meet with them backstage. Here we chat with artistic director Tory Dobrin, who sheds light on the secret formula that has made the Trocks such an international sensation.

UrbanWire: How has the concept of the Trocks evolved since the company was formed in 1975?

Tory Dobrin: "The concept of the company has remained the same, which is [that it is] an all male comic ballet company, but things have changed quite a bit, because society has changed quite a bit in 30 years. The technical dancing level is much higher than it was. 30 years ago, the dancers where happy just to get up on pointe, which is a move that only a ballerina would normally do, but as you saw today, they are actually quite good and they're technically quite secure on pointe. Also the humour is also a little [broader], a little bit freer. Earlier they were really worried about offending, and were finding their way, but the concept is the same."

UrbanWire: How is comedy combined with such a serious art form as ballet, considering that it could be construed as mocking the dances?

Tory Dobrin: "Well, we're never mocking dances - we all love dance, so it's not about mockery, it's about commenting on dance styles. We know that the audience is coming to enjoy themselves - that's their reason for coming to the theatre - and so what we try to do is give them a wide variety of different things to look at, so for instance, in the programme in Singapore, we'll open the programme with Swan Lake Act 2 and it's actually pretty broad humour, it's kinda campy, there's lots of carrying-on, and it's all good choreography, and it's all true to the choreography, but it's fun, and it's really free-spirited. At the end of the programme, for the last act, we're doing a ballet called Paquita, and that's actually danced very normally, just like the company might do it in St. Petersburg, but we add exaggeration of style, so the audience is seeing is seeing 2 completely different styles of comedy and satire - it's hard to find the balance."

UrbanWire: Do different cultures respond differently to the Trocks, considering that the content could be construed as being risqué?

Tory Dobrin: "No, actually the audience response all over the world is pretty much the same, funnily enough. I get that question a lot and everyone is shocked when I say, no.... Because it's visual - the world is really small now, and everybody has TV, and everybody watches MTV, and they see ballets on video, and they see Dame Edna from Australia do his thing, so drag is really not that totally unusual anymore, and we're basically 1 world these days. I mean, being in Singapore is great, but it's really not that much different from any other large city - of course it's cleaner and greener, but it's really not much different [from anywhere else in the world]."

UrbanWire: Could you tell us more about your role in the company as Artistic Director?

Tory Dobrin: "Well, I choose the ballets, I choose the dancers, I organise the programmes, I speak to journalists, and I set the tone for what happens on stage. The dancers really have a lot of opportunities for expressing themselves on stage character-wise - they're encouraged to develop their characters and really find themselves in a funny manner, but I set the tone."

UrbanWire: How do you pick dancers for the Trocks?

Tory Dobrin: "Well nowadays we're getting most of our dancers from our website. I get emails from dancers all over the world who want to audition. And that's unusual, that's new, since websites haven't been around that long. And what they do is, they come and spend a few days with us - they take company class, I see how they get along with everybody, I see how they learn new material, and if there's a spot, and they seem to fit in well, we might hire them."

UrbanWire: The Trocks are basically doing lots of different excerpts from different ballets - have you ever considered doing a complete ballet, like for example, the whole of Swan Lake?

Tory Dobrin: "No, we don't do full-length [ballets], and the reason is because we think that the programme works better if there's a lot of variety - a lot of variety of style, a lot of variety of music, a lot of variety of costuming, and Swan Lake, for instance, was choreographed by 2 Russian men - 1 of the men was French of course, but he lived in Russia - so it's all basically the same style and the same music, but we'd like to mix it up so the audience really sees a variety of things - works better for us."

"We might [do a full length ballet], who knows. We talked about putting together Sleeping Beauty. We got an inquiry from the UK to tour around with a 1-act, a full evening length ballet. We were looking into doing something we call "Fractured Fairytales" - which would have been a series of fairytales, which would be the same theme for the whole evening."