Men in Tutus

The women on my right are shrieking with laughter. The man on my left is twitching around with badly disguised restlessness. I’m sitting in the middle, oddly ambivalent.

We’re all watching Les Ballets Eloelle perform Men In Tutus, a ballet with a twist as male dancers don flowing dresses, pert tutus and lashings of make-up to dance all the female roles. They perform excepts from classical and contemporary ballets, delivered with tongue-in-cheek humour wafted along by their outlandishly long fluttering eyelashes.

It’s a mash-up between technically perfect dancing and outright parody, nodding at both but not really hitting either. The result is a toned-down ballet that lacks the soaring, spectacular highs of pure ballet, but doesn’t have sufficient send-up factor to make it hilarious. The in-jokes revolve around clashing egos, bumping into one another, and a demand for more audience applause that quickly begins to grate.

Yes, I’m being a curmudgeon, so I make a deliberate effort to find my inner pleb and switch off the brain.

The best moments come when they take the piss more openly, like a dancer pulling a toy duck behind him to set the scene for Swan Lake. Much of the humour also lies in the facial expressions, with prima donna dagger-eyes and looks of ennui when another dancer hogs the limelight.

The 15-strong cast drawn from around the world comes in all shapes and sizes, united by a classically trained technique gained at renowned ballet academies.

An older, chunkier dancer tries to hog the limelight in the opening Pas de Quatre, while her nimbler brethren literally run rings around her. Perhaps she’s weighed down by the oceans of pearls she’s wearing. Another looks like a burly Springboks lock, although he turns out not to be the South African fielded in this crew. That’s Joel Morris, who trained at the Royal Ballet School and has performed with South African Ballet Theatre.

The highlight in the first half is Go for Barocco, a send-up of George Balanchine’s choreography where the prowess of the dancers is fully on display.

The second half is more fun, given over to a recreation of Swan Lake, complete with the evil sorcerer, love struck prince and a chorus of prancing male swans.

Although it obviously lacks the svelte grace that women bring or the breathtaking athleticism we’ve seen with Russian troupes, Les Ballets Eloelle can certainly dance. They carry their muscle-bound frames en pointe with elegance as well as humour, and a smattering of them who dance the male roles lift and support their partners with remarkable aplomb.

The recorded music fills the large Teatro auditorium well, and there are a couple of scenic backdrops and excellent lighting.

The dancers have each adopted amusing names to give their characters some colour, like Victor Trevino, who dances as Nina Minimaximova. His piece de resistance sees him shedding fluffy feathers in a mournful, excellently-executed solo as the Dying Swan. Trevino is the artistic director and founder of Les Ballets Eloelle, and says the aim is to cultivate new audiences for dance through comedy while preserving the standards of excellence to educate audiences about the art form. It must also create longevity for dancers who are being usurped by younger rivals competing for the dearth of male ballet roles.

Does Men In Tutus make ballet more accessible? Yes, as in the fun factor will draw a larger audience that wouldn’t go to see a full-on serious ballet.

At the end, the women on my right were dizzy with delight. And my friend to my left? “Hmmm,” he said. “I’d rather have stayed at home and watched the rugby.”

Men In Tutus runs at The Teatro at Montecasino on Saturday at 3pm and 8pm, Sunday at 3pm then moves to Cape Town’s Artscape from Thursday 18 to Sunday 21. Tickets from Computicket.