Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo turns 50 this year. It is cause for celebration when any dance company reaches such a milestone, but especially for one that falls outside the typical mold: a queer, mostly male comic ballet company where the dancers perform en travesti and on pointe. The Trocks, as the company is called, have persevered through decades of challenges to appear in 43 countries and more than 660 cities worldwide. They will finish out their jam-packed golden-anniversary season December 17–January 5 at The Joyce Theater, with the premiere of Durante Verzola’s Symphony (inspired by George Balanchine’s Symphony in C), along with crowd favorites like Giselle (Act 2), Raymonda’s Wedding, and Swan Lake (Act 2).
The company was founded in 1974 by Peter Anastos, Anthony Bassae, and Natch Taylor with the goal of presenting all-male parodies of classical ballets. The shows were meant to be entertaining but were also an homage to the glory days of the Ballets Russes, hence the company’s name and dramatic personality. The Trocks quickly gained popularity and began touring, delighting audiences across the country and then the world with their flamboyant antics and athletic pointework.
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A program from the Trocks’ first performance in New York City in 1974. Courtesy of the Trocks.
Tory Dobrin, the company’s current artistic director, joined the Trocks in 1980, performing as Margaret Lowen-Octeyn and Adam Baum (all the dancers take on dual personas that then play the characters within the ballets). The 1980s was a period of growth and great excitement, but also of chaos and disruption. The AIDS epidemic decimated the company, which was made up almost entirely of gay men, leaving it heartbroken and vulnerable to the financial and social effects of the conservative backlash during the “culture wars” of the 1990s.
After suffering an injury, Dobrin moved into a management role within the company, eventually taking over its artistic direction around 1992. Over the years, he has raised the Trocks out of financial hardship and helped it gain respect within the industry. The company has earned itself numerous accolades, including the UK Theatre Award and a Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for Outstanding Repertoire, and has been the subject of two documentaries: Rebels on Pointe and Ballerina Boys.
During its 50 years, the troupe has never strayed from its comedic roots but has evolved in other ways. According to Dobrin, the quality of dancing is much higher than it used to be. “That’s not to say I was a bad dancer,” he says with a smile, “but the dancing now is as good as any company.” Also, while the drag element was initially more extreme (their makeup was purposefully over-the-top), Dobrin says that because the new generation of dancers has been exposed to drag all their lives, they gravitate more toward looks that highlight the beauty and elegance of the art form.
Andrea Fabbri, born and raised in Italy and a member of the company since 2023, said his “very supportive” colleagues gave him tips on how to apply his stage makeup. “As long as we have a red lip and look presentable for the really strong stage lights, we’ll be okay,” he says, adding with a laugh, “A ‘Trockadero lip,’ I would call it.”
Fabbri had danced with traditional companies like the Los Angeles Ballet and the Estonian National Ballet, where he could only “play around” practicing variations on pointe (his Trocks colleagues helped him with that, too). He first encountered the Trocks as a boy when he attended a class with their ballet master, Raffaele Morra, and then through Paquita, which Fabbri and his friends watched repeatedly on YouTube. “It’s quite interesting now to be doing the same choreography I watched about 15 years ago,” he says.
The transition from a traditional company to the Trocks was “a bit of a jumping-in-the-dark situation” for Fabbri, but now he is happily settled in. “I feel like when I’m dancing in Trockadero, I am expressing parts of my personality and feeling the freedom that I wasn’t feeling before onstage. With the roles I was dancing before, there was something missing there, and I think it was the enjoyment, and actually feeling like my true self.”
While discussions of gender expression and diversity are now mainstream, that wasn’t always the case. “I like to think that society has finally caught up to us,” Dobrin says, “because we’ve been dealing with these issues since day one.” Because they are a group of mostly gay men playing roles that women normally do, the Trocks have always been tackling issues of gender stereotypes and homophobia. “And we’ve always had a diverse group of guys,” he explains. “Different body types, different colors, different backgrounds.” Current company members hail from not only the U.S. but also Brazil, Cuba, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and Spain.
Robert Carter, who had danced with the Dance Theatre of Harlem Ensemble before joining the Trocks in 1995, says, “We have always been there to open minds and touch hearts and broaden thoughts.” For Carter, dancing with the Trocks has been not just his career but his life. He’d had a fascination with the company since he was young, even though he was told repeatedly that “boys can’t dance on pointe.” Joining the company was a dream come true, and he immediately felt at home there. “I’ve been allowed to be an artist with the kind of artistic freedom that I never would have gotten had I been in a more conventional setting elsewhere,” he says.
The company’s impact on the art form is undeniable. Because of the Trocks, it is now more acceptable for male and nonbinary dancers to dance on pointe in traditional companies, and for same-sex partnering to take center stage. Ballet is allowed not to take itself too seriously, and audiences are allowed to laugh.
Without a doubt, the Trocks will continue doing what they have always done: “We make it so that everyone can attend,” Carter says, “from children to grown people. It’s strictly entertainment, not a political statement. They get to laugh, and for those two hours, let go of their cares for a while. I think that’s what our service is to this collective.”
