A man dressed as a woman may cause a stir in some neighborhoods, but in the history of the theater cross-dressing is hardly out of the ordinary. Men played women’s roles in traditional kabuki theater and boys portrayed women in Shakespearean theater in the Elizabethan age.
The history of ballet is even more of a funhouse mirror of cross-dressing, gender-bending, and role reversal. Louis XIV, like his father, often danced the part of a fetching village girl. But by the 1840s role reversal had turned full circle and male dancers were all but banned from Parisian stages, their roles performed by ballerinas en travesti.
Not to mention ballet’s tradition of Ugly Stepsisters and Evil Fairies outrageously portrayed by older men. So when we heard that Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, 16 hairy-chested guys in pointe shoes and tutus, were coming to Cleveland on Sat 1/29, we saw them as part of the great tradition of the ballet and arranged a telephone interview with the Ballet Master of the Trockadero, Paul Ghiselin, also known as Ida Nevasayneva, Socialist Ballerina and Heroine of the Revolution.
CoolCleveland: We hear you danced in Heinz Poll’s Ohio Ballet.
Paul Ghiselin: Yes. For a little over 13 years.
We need not ask how Heinz felt about you dancing with the Trockadero. Heinz definitely had a sense of humor.
I remember when I went in his office to tell him that I was resigning from Ohio Ballet to dance with the Trockadero. His eyes lit up and he said, “Oh, that is so perfect for you. I can see you doing something there.” So he was very supportive.
(Laughing) That’s a great story.
When I joined the Trockadero, I was looking at it as just something to do for some fun for a couple of years; see the world a bit; and that would be my way of bowing out of my dance career. That was 15 years ago. Hard to believe.
Dancing with the Trockadero was like learning to dance all over again. A whole new repertoire. The Trockadero’s rep is the classics, and the old-fashioned classics at that.
The exact opposite of Heinz Poll.
Exact opposite! Which is what made it so much fun. We were going back to a repertoire that I had learned while I was in school.
Even if you had been in a big classical company, you might have danced Swan Lake but you wouldn’t have been one of the swans.
Right. With the Trocks I was dancing roles that men never get to dance. That’s the thing about the Trockadero. People who love to dance love working here, because we dance a lot. We danced 136 performances last year and performed for over 100,000 people.
You’re in the midst of quite a tour now.
We just finished a 3-week run at the Joyce Theater in New York City. Seven shows a week. Next time they want us for 4 weeks because we sell out.
Now we do two weeks touring the U.S. and Canada and six weeks in the United Kingdom. We do a lot of touring, a lot of flying. We will be on buses. We will be on trains.
And the reason for all this popular appeal is partly that you’re funny, but there’s also a particular way in which you address the dancing.Yes, we’re dancers first. It’s kind of our credo. When we rehearse and work on ballets, we do a great bit of homework, going back to the original choreography, hiring Russian ballerinas to come in and teach and coach us. So we have authentic structure to these old ballets.
The jokes are sometimes built into the choreography; sometimes they come out of things people do in rehearsal. The company is made up of outcasts; these guys were class clowns in their other companies. And it’s a small company – only about 16 dancers – so everybody has to be a star to some extent, and everybody has to learn everybody’s roles.
Sixteen is a very small company when it comes to producing the classics. And you’re bringing Swan Lake, among other big productions, to Cleveland.
When people think of the Trockadero, they immediately think of Swan Lake. It’s a classic, a perfect marriage. Molting swans, the Prince and the Princess, the evil sorcerer, there are so many elements to Swan Lake. And the choreography that we use is based on the old, old Russian choreography that nobody does any more. The steps are all there.
So when you credit the choreography as being “After Lev Ivanov,” you’re not fooling. For us, that’s one of the rewards of watching the Trockadero. We laugh, sure, but there’s a certain fascination seeing the original versions of these old classics.
Camp classics, and nobody else does them any more. The Trockadero is like a library of dance.
We hear you’re doing a Cunningham piece with music after John Cage.
We have our own take on Cage; you literally sit there and watch the musicians upstage the dancers.
The dancing is actually the creation of Meg Harper, a former Cunningham dancer. The piece that Cunningham originally gave us, Cross Currents, they took back. We danced it for a couple of years, then they came and rechecked us and said, “No, no, no.” But the piece that Harper’s done for us is things you’d do in an actual Cunningham class.
The Merce Cunningham Dance Company is planning to disband at the end of this year. You guys might find yourselves the leading exponents of Cunningham technique.
Yeah, right. Our main thing is Russian ballet.
You’d be referring to Raymonda’s Wedding, which your program note aptly describes as “traditionally confusing.”
The story of Raymonda is beyond me, but there’s this recurring figure, the White Lady, running around with a wedding cake, making sure everyone’s happy. Our Raymonda dispenses with the plot; it’s just a long parade of people coming on stage and dancing a lot.
Tell us about Grand Pas de Quatre.
I used to be in that. It was one of my big roles. I was Taglioni. It’s one of our staples, with all the mannerisms and the quirky gestures. It takes a lot of coaching.
The ultimate Romantic Ballet with all the ultra feminine grand divas. And again, you do pretty much the original choreography?
Oh, yeah. And we’ll throw in something extra here and there depending on the dancer.
Should we keep it a secret that you’ll be doing Dying Swan?
Dying Swan is my biggest role anymore. My dancing days are pretty much over, but I can still do the Dying Swan. I could be in everything but I’m really hoping I’m not, because I have a master class in Cleveland and that day is going to be so long.
Les Ballets Trockadero De Monte Carlo will perform at 8pm on Sat 1/29 at the Ohio Theater; for tickets $20 to $50 phone 216-241-6000 or go to http://Playhousesquare.com. Co-presented by DANCECleveland and Cuyahoga Community College Tri-C Presents.
Ballet Master Class with the Trocks is at 10 – 11:30AM on Sat 1/29 at Playhouse Square’s Red Rehearsal Room. Enter through the Stage Door off of Chester/Dodge Court. Ages 12 and older. Arrive by 9:45AM. RSVP to Lynn Deering of Cleveland State University at l.deering@csuohio.edu.
[Photos by Sascha Vaughan]
From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas. Elsa and Vic are both longtime Clevelanders. Elsa is a landscape designer. She studied ballet as an avocation for 2 decades. Vic has been a dancer and dance teacher for most of his working life, performing in a number of dance companies in NYC and Cleveland. They write about dance as a way to learn more and keep in touch with the dance community. E-mail them at vicnelsaATearthlink.net.