MUSIC AND DANCE REVIEWS : Stylish Parodies From Trockadero

With its new “Star Spangled Ballerina or Bags with Flags,” Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo offers what it does best: Dead-on parody of major dance works, performed so stylishly that the drag aspects merely wind up flickering in and out of awareness.

In this case, troupe resident choreographer Marcus Galante has zeroed in on the patriotic zest of Balanchine’s “Stars and Stripes.”

Galante uses some of the same Sousa marches, also presents a majorette leading a corps regiment, arranges a pas de deux (here for a Mr. and Mrs. Piccadore) and masses everyone in front of an American flag at the end. Hurrah!

And yes, everyone salutes while dancing. Constantly.

Seen Saturday at Marsee Auditorium at El Camino College in Torrance, Elena Kumonova (Joey Nevins) devastated as the high-kicking, pointe-stabbing majorette.

Mikhail Mypansarov (Oswaldo Muniz) and Nina Enimenimynimova (Victor Trevino) breezed through the central pas de deux, full of the virtuoso jumps and catches and other challenges.

The corps of six bounded and lurched with manic energy.

Less happily, Act II of “Swan Lake” looked very broad, if not coarse, in comedy, with the tall, lanky Karina Grudj (Allen Dennis) not yet entirely inhabiting the Trock vision of Odette.

Kumonova and Mypansarov danced a quicksilver “Don Quixote” pas de deux: she with demonic glee, he with terminal boredom.

Vera Namethatunova (Alfonzo Avila) molted stiffly as “The Dying Swan.” Engaging performances of “Pas de Quatre” and “I Wanted to Dance With You at the Cafe of Experience” completed the program.

The Trock roster lists a host of new names, from dancers to administrators. The poignant dedication of the evening “to all the TROCKS and other dancers who have died of AIDS and other causes” may contain an explanation.