Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, London
The all-male Trocks company is still one of the classiest acts in ballet, its comic parodies of the classical repertory created with wit, slapstick and fanatical attention to detail. Men in tutus and size-12 pointe shoes evoke the great ballerinas, as well as their princely partners. Among the works included are extracts from familiars such as Swan Lake, plus less well-known pieces like Esmeralda and the Trocks’s blissful satire on Balanchine, Go For Barocco. For the first time in the UK, it also performs Don Quixote, promising to max up the swagger and fireworks of Petipa.
Peacock Theatre, WC2, Tue to 20 Sep
Hofesh Shechter Company: Barbarians, London
Last year, Hofesh Shechter premiered the first part of his new trilogy, The Barbarians In Love. Set to music by the baroque composer Couperin, it contrasted the rigours of classical structure with the trembling emotion and raw physicality of its six dancers, and also with Shechter’s recorded confession of the traumas of his own mid-life crisis. The two concluding parts, added here, offer different takes on love and anxiety, moving through a world of dubstep and harsh urban moves to a duet of quirky accommodation. Shechter’s choreography may currently be passing through a self-questioning phase but his dancers are reliably superb.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1, Fri to 25 Sep
