WHAT IS MALE COMEDY BALLET?
Male comedy ballet was the brain child of Larry Rae, creator of the original Gloxinia Trocadero Ballet Company, where men dressed as ballerinas and performed parodies of ballets in small venues in New York city during the 1970’s. Since then the art form has grown globally to where companies have formed in England, Japan, Russia, and the United States. WHY DO YOUR MEN DRESS AS WOMEN? The tradition of men playing female roles extends back to ancient Greece, when (for some reason) woman were forbidden by law to perform publicly on stage. To accommodate the need for female characters, male actors and chorus members wore female attire and masks to represent women. When the Christian Church emerged during the time of the Roman Empire, lessons from the scriptures were presented in the form of dramas, and staged using clerics and choir boys to portray female characters. The tradition continued for centuries in Persia, in Elizabethan England, during the Muromachi period in Japan, and between th
