The moment the announcer told the patrons that flash photography was forbidden because the flashing lights might remind the ladies of the Bolshevik gunfire, the audience knew they weren’t in for an ordinary ballet.
    
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is a ballet performance unlike any other. The troupe (nicknamed the Trocks) consists entirely of men playing both the male and female roles. The Trocks take on some of ballet’s most classic and challenging pieces to create a show that is both parody and art.
    
Students and non-students alike attended the ballet Thursday evening at the Clarence Brown Theatre. The University of Tennessee’s Cultural Attractions Committee sponsored the event.
   
 “We voted to bring it because we thought it sounded really interesting,” Sarah Houston, senior in English and vice chair of the Cultural Attractions Committee, said. “We thought it would reach a wide range with the college community and the Knoxville community at large.”
    
The show began with Act II of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” The scene opened like any other performance of the classic ballet with the villain Rothbart spinning and leaping through the air. However, the majestic dance soon devolved into Rothbart running in circles until finally pausing to catch his breath, while Tchaikovsky’s score played on with the audience laughing in accompaniment.
   
 The first act of the show continued in that fashion: a mixture of fantastic and unbelievable dancing mixed with intentional blunders and goofs for humor. Sometimes dancers would be out of place and have to rush across the stage to get in formation. Dancers acknowledged the crowd and demanded a louder applause. A Trock would be on the stage for a solo performance, when suddenly, another Trock would jump his cue and come out too soon, only to quickly run backstage.
    
After a brief intermission, the Trocks returned for their second act with “Patterns in Space,” which they describe as a “post modern dance movement essay … with choreography after Merce Cunningham.” This time, the humor lay mostly in a mock, live musical performance. While three Trocks danced around the stage, two others “played” music using such instruments as ripped paper bags, bubble wrap, xylophones and kazoos.
    
While humor was still present in the second act, the focus began to shift to the technical prowess of the Trocks. There were fewer instances of dancers intentionally falling down and more cases of difficult kicks and pirouettes.
    
By the conclusion of the third act, each of the Trocks had a moment of solo performance. While no longer making jokes about the rigid constraint in ballet performance, each of the Trocks took a moment to perform spectacularly across the center stage, weaving and spinning while the rest of the cast performed equally well in the background.
    
But not wanting to end the show on too serious of a note, the Trocks took a bow and then gave one last gag. With a disco ball floating in the air, the Trocks performed a final dance number to the big band song “Sing, Sing, Sing” by Benny Goodman.
    
The audience laughed and applauded throughout the entire show, giving the Trocks a standing ovation at the finale.
    
“I thought it was wonderful,” Jessica Hill, sophomore in theater, said. “I (liked) that it was a performance. There wasn’t just dancing.”