Tutu review – cheeky tribute to ballet has a disco Swan Lake and the Dirty Dancing lift

2 hours ago 2

When the curtain goes up here in east London, just across town there’s another opening night: fans gathering to worship the late dance theatre icon Pina Bausch, whose Sweet Mambo is at Sadler’s Wells. Whereas on this stage, six men send up Bausch’s choreography and signature style, skewering its cliches. Not that everyone in the audience will know the reference. If you’re not a regular dance-goer, you may just see a bunch of men in long flowing gowns processing around the stage and flinging their long wigs about. But still entertaining.

A lot of Tutu, after all, is just about raising mirth through silly dancing and silly costumes. All-male comedy dance company Chicos Mambo, directed by French choreographer Philippe Lafeuille, have been performing this show for more than a decade, and it seems to be a camp crowd-pleaser. Certainly the costumes are fun: puffy, flamingo-coloured tutu trousers, like a cross between a powder puff and a frilly toilet roll cover; hats that look like vegetables (Why? Why not!).

Much like that other all-male troupe the Trocks, a lot of the material comes from a gently mocking but deep love of dance. Swan Lake’s cygnets become daffy ducks in dumpy costumes, putting a bit of disco into Tchaikovsky. You’ve got some Sleeping Beauty, some earnest Euro-contemporary dance soundtracked by the dancers’ breath (bad breath, it turns out, that’s the joke). There’s a Dirty Dancing skit, complete with Swayze’s swivel hips, a ticklish armpit and, yes, the lift.

There are a few curious surprises too. Tutu is a study in contrasts – Bach’s Goldberg Variations mixed with the haka, for example. The dancers rinse a few laughs out of men hobbling on pointe shoes, but then Vincenzo Veneruso dances a rather beautiful solo, on pointe. There’s a scene with the six men as babies in nappies, tottering, nose-picking and bum-shuffling to the fierce, slicing chords of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. (Because it’s a kind of fertility ritual? Or just because it’s the most random, unlikely thing you could set to that legendary music?)

It’s amusingly done, clever in parts, nonsense in others; it’s tightly choreographed larking about. But you do find yourself asking, is there more to this joke? Then again, a few rows ahead, a child of maybe seven or eight (who I’m assuming has never heard of Pina Bausch) is in absolute hysterics from start to finish.