Watching a bunch of grown men wearing tutus and pancake makeup parodying some of ballet's most cherished classics, such as "The Dying Swan" and "The Nutcracker Suite," may not sound like everybody's bag. But the wildly hilarious Les Ballets Grandiva, an all-male comedy ballet troupe based in New York, delivers the goods with the right combo of technical virtuosity and slapstick comedy -- hairy armpits and all.
While the genre of male comedy ballet has existed since the early '70s -- largely thanks to the critical acclaim of the off-Broadway group Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo -- the huge popularity of Grandiva in Japan is unrivaled. Last year, the troupe's 60-stop tour of Japan was seen by more than 90,000 fans, with Tokyo alone drawing 20,000. Now, the 21-member dance outfit, founded by artistic director and dancer Victor Trevino in 1996, is back for a three-month tour that sweeps from Hokkaido to Okinawa and plays the Kanto area June 27-July 4. The 58-stop "Divalympics" tour, which marks the company's eighth visit to Japan, will culminate in a two-night engagement at Tokyo's Shinjuku Bunka Center on Aug. 7 and 8.
"I had worked in male comedy ballet before for many years, but I felt a lot of ground had been left unexplored," Trevino said in an e-mail interview during the Kyushu leg of the tour last week. "I thought the field was a bit one-dimensional and I wanted to expand the boundaries."