As the curtain fell on "Le Grand Pas de Deux" (a spoof ballet) at the Ballet Theater gala, John Karls sprang from his seat.
And nothing could be more fun than watching the gentlemen of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, a travesty troupe, show off their impressive pointe work in intelligent spoofs of ballet grandiloquence (Aug. 11-15).
Set to clunkily familiar music by nine composers, among them Saint-Saëns ("Dying Swan") and Tchaikovsky ("The Nutcracker"), this 1971 romp finally becomes an out-and-out spoof of ballet with its closing défilé.
In his boasting scene Charles the wrestler is a leather mask handed off from actor to actor and speaking in various voices, but when he is in the ring with Orlando, the wrestler is actually a woman, and the struggle becomes a fine spoof of ballet.
In the first-act "Princess Zenobia" ballet, a spoof of the kind of pretentious Russian ballets that did not travel well from Moscow to Broadway, the two stars play tricks on each other, trying to hide their mutual lust, while Junior Dolan wrecks the entire ballet disguised as a Nubian slave while Konstantine tries to drive him off the stage.
Peter Anastos's "Yes, Virginia, Another Piano Ballet" is a spoof of the lyrical ballets to Chopin piano music made popular by Jerome Robbins.
To be sure, the ballet is a spoof.
Opera house needs a reality check The Royal Opera House launched a reality TV approach to opera and ballet, putting out a spoof TV talk show.
And then there are passages in which the comedy becomes so broad it dredges up memories of A Bullet in the Ballet, a once-beloved spoof whodunit by Brahms and Simon (that's Caryl, not Johannes, Brahms).
The program, which stars ballet luminaries like Suzanne Farewell, Sylvie Gruyere and Lotte Latte, includes spoofs of dance by George Balanchine, William Forsythe and Marius Petipa.
