Ballet on the Trocks
Feb. 2—The pointe shoe fit for Felix Molinero del Paso. And he wears it with aplomb.
The 26-year-old is a member of the cast of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, and he says he first tried pointe shoes thanks to a college dance instructor. Molinero del Paso attended the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, and he had a teacher named Andrea Tallis who thought it was good practice for men to try wearing pointe shoes. They can help in their leaping, says Molinero del Paso, because they provide more support.
He took to it, and Tallis kept telling him he should apply to Les Ballets Trockadero. At first, he says, it felt like an impossible dream.
But finally, says Molinero del Paso, he decided to take her up on it.
"She was behind me for months telling me to write an email. And I was like, 'Andrea, it's not going to happen,'" says the dancer. "Suddenly — you know how they say you're at the right time and right place? — the stars aligned. I decided to write an email and lucky enough, they were touring in Germany. They were in Leipzig, which was four or five hours away. They told me I could come and take a class for one day. I stayed a full week and got the job."
Molinero del Paso has now been part of the drag ballet troupe's cast for six years, and it's taken him all over the world.
His instructor, Tallis, got to see him perform live in Sweden last year, and he'll be in Santa Fe with the Trocks for the first time on February 12.
That will be the second opportunity for local audiences to see an incredible touring act presented by Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. MOMIX will play its Alice in Wonderland-inspired repertory at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, February 6, and then Molinero del Paso and company will squeeze into their tutus on the same stage just six days later.
details
MOMIX
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, February 6
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo
7:30 p.m. Monday, February 12
Lensic Performing Arts Center
211 W. San Francisco Street
$36-$114
505-988-1234; lensic.org
Many of the Trocks play two roles throughout the production, and Molinero del Paso is no exception.
He plays both Holly Dey-Abroad, a witless ingenue, and German defector Bruno Backpfeifengesicht, and he says the challenge of playing both characters helps keep him on his toes.
"It's not only focusing on technique and developing your stage presence," he says. "You're an actor. You're interacting with all your colleagues to make these jokes, to make it work. We take all these classical ballets and we give them a twist, a little bit of extra exaggeration."
Molinero del Paso hails from Granada, Spain, and he says he started dancing at a conservatory at 9 years old. He later studied ballet for six years before attending the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, and he says the other 14 dancers in the cast have a diverse background; some have ballet training, and some are more contemporary dancers.
And he says you might even say the same thing about the audience.
"You can like ballet and like our show. And maybe you don't like ballet but you like comedy. You'll still like our show," he says. "You'll find in the audience very young kids and teenagers and also the older generations. A lot of the time, people come with no expectations because maybe they've never heard of us. Or they've heard of us but haven't seen us. And there's another side of the audience who have been watching us for years and years."
How do the Trocks get their signature choreography down?
Practice, practice, practice. When the dancers are at their home base in New York, says Molinero del Paso, they have eight-hour days from Monday to Saturday. And when they hit the road, a good portion of the day is dedicated to rehearsal and making sure that the staging is right for the dancers.
The show is two hours with two intermissions, and Molinero del Paso says they have wardrobe assistants who help them out of one costume and into another.
He has been a full-fledged member of the group since 2021, and he says it's gotten easier to do his makeup over time. Another shared responsibility, he says, is the necessity of learning his colleagues' steps in case he's needed on a moment's notice. There's one member of the cast, Robert Carter, who has been setting an extremely difficult act to follow since 1995.
"I call her Mama," Molinero del Paso says of Carter, who plays Yuri Smirnov and Olga Supphozova. "He's the most talented American dancer I've met from his generation. I have the privilege to learn from him. He's done every spot in the repertory. I'm one of the oldest in terms of being in the company. But he started in 1995. And I was born in 1997."
