Are The "Trocks" in Town?

Are Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo in Town? 2010

Couldn’t resist this.

While walking on the Virginia Beach boardwalk the other day just after the annual Neptune Festival Grand Parade, a flock of grown men and boys in duck costumes cut across the boardwalk to get to the beach, where I presume they were going to splash around in the water like ducks do. I don’t know what group they represented. I'm pretty sure it wasn't Ducks Unlimited. (There wasn't enough camouflage.)

They were funny looking and everyone got a kick out of them. But I couldn’t look at them without recalling Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo, a group of serious male dancers who perform, as London’s Sadler’s Well Theater put it, “a unique brand of ballet, dancing a fine line between high art and high camp.”

Look at this short clip of the “Trocks,” as they’re called by their fans, performing a bit of Swan Lake.

I don’t know much about dance. I admire the beauty and athleticism of some of it. But I’m pretty clueless about a lot of it. I am, though, big on musical parodies. Put me in a room with a stack of P.D.Q. Bach records, for example, and I’ll be no good for the rest of the day.

The Trocks aren’t as over the top as P.D.Q. Bach, whose zaniness is ultimately a high-class form of music education. But I suspect that if I had more time to go explore the Trocks on YouTube I could become hooked in their antics and probably gain a much better understanding of dance along the way.

Here’s some more of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo for your viewing pleasure.