Gender-bending ballet troupe toes the line to a pointe
By Janine Parker
Globe Correspondent / August 14, 2010
http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2010/08/14/gender_bending_ballet_troupe_toes_the_line/BECKET — The all-male company Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, making its Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival debut this week, boasts performers who subject their toes to an unpretty fate, choosing to wear pointe shoes, those instruments of torture for countless young girls studying ballet. It's not pretty for the audience, either, seeing giant feet in otherwise delicate slippers, hairy chests sprouting above bodices, and muscular legs bulging from beneath the tutus, but it is hilarious.
Of course the whole enterprise would be a one-note joke if it weren't for the salient fact that these men train, rigorously: Dancing in general, and pointework in particular, is not for the faint of heart.
