Wannabe swans learn to drop dead
Dancers learn how to die comically from Trocks master
“There are no rules about this — you can all do whatever you want,” Raffaele Morra declared to the dancers gathered around him. That’s not the typical direction given by ballet teachers, who are better known for enforcing strict conformity than for nurturing individuality.
But this was no ordinary ballet class, and Morra is no ordinary teacher. He is a dancer and ballet master with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, the venerable all-male comedy company that lovingly spoofs the ballet canon. On the morning of Saturday, March 4, in the midst of the Trocks’ 40th-anniversary season at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, he taught a master class in one of the company’s signature works, “The Dying Swan.”
Hosted by Cal Performances, the Community Class drew 25 would-be swans to the spacious, light-filled studio at Hearst Gymnasium at UC Berkeley. The diverse bevy ranged from undergrads in sweats to ballerinas in leotards, and Morra encouraged each of them to create their own version of the three-minute solo, one of the most recognizable ballets ever created.
“In this workshop, everyone has a moment of finding a funny way to express themselves,” said the Italianborn Morra, 41, in a pre-class phone interview. “We get people who don’t do ballet at all, and you see a natural way of expression that is not hidden by the technique. That has helped me to incorporate something more natural into my ‘Dying Swan.’ I learn from them, not just they from me.”
Choreographed in 1905 by Mikhail Fokine for the great ballerina Anna
Pavlova of the Ballets Russes, “The Dying Swan” is set to an elegiac violin solo from Camille Saint-Saëns’ “The Carnival of the Animals.” The Trocks perform the original choreography but put their own spin on it, combining tender musicality with vaudevillian trips, tumbles and grimaces.
A 16-year Trocks veteran, Morra has performed “The Dying Swan” countless times in his ballerina guise, Lariska Dumbchenko. (Every Trock is anointed with two Russian-parody stage names, one female and one male; Morra performs danseur roles under the name Pepe Dufka.) Morra’s conceit is that an offstage hunter has injured the swan’s wing with an arrow.
“They all die differently,” observed attendee Chuan Phung, 20, of the Trocks’ many moribund flock members. A junior in economics and an enthusiastic ballet student, she describes “The Dying Swan” as sacred. “I didn’t think there was going to be that much leeway,” she said. “It was nice that he let us be dancers.”
After demonstrating his personal version, Morra began by teaching the dancers to flap their wings — “It starts in the center of your back” — then added bourrées, the rapid, tippy-toe steps done with one foot in front of the other. Almost instantaneously, the class coalesced into a graceful corps, floating over the sorrowful music.
Morra layered his lesson with the essentials of comedy, foremost among them “Don’t try to be funny.” (Of course, everyone laughed at that.) In short order, and in true Trocks fashion, they collapsed onto the floor like lame ducks, gleefully skewering the seriousness of it all. A Trock takes his curtain calls like a queen, so the class finished with melodramatic bows and suggestions on hamming it up for greater applause — tipping over is never a bad idea.
The experience doubled as a performance primer for Mingxi Liu, 28, a postdoctoral fellow in Cal’s Energy and Resources Group, and his wife, who had tickets for the Saturday matinee. “The most essential thing I learned today was the whole idea of the show,” said Liu, who had no previous dance training. “It’s to have fun. I think that’s a fantastic idea.”
The Trocks do love to get laughs, but they take ballet very seriously. When Artistic Director Tory Dobrin joined as a dancer in the 1980s, “the Trockadero was considered a career wrecker. Now it’s actually a career choice,” he said by phone from the company’s New York headquarters.
“In the 1980s, drag was an important part of the comedy,” he continued. “Other elements have developed over the years, including the level of the dancing technique, and the comedy has become wider in scope.” Some of today’s Trocks are so refined, they are almost indistinguishable from female ballerinas. In February, Chase Johnsey (a.k.a. Yekaterina Verbosovich) won the United Kingdom National Dance Award as best male dancer — for dancing the prima ballerina role of “Paquita.”
“We are not just clowns, we are dancers,” Morra said. “We decide to make it funny because we want to, and not because we cannot do it the real way.”
Back in Berkeley, Morra’s affection for “The Dying Swan,” and his pride in dancing it well, gave the class as much depth as mirth. Between wing flaps and pratfalls, he dispensed his very best advice. “You want everybody to love you,” he told the group. “So whatever you do, smile.”