On Stage
According to her short online biography, Vanya Verikosa, the “hardest working living ballerina,” has survived three revolutions and two counter-insurgencies—not to mention a harrowing transit strike.
Look a little closer, and you’ll notice there’s something else that’s a little different about the globetrotting dancer. In addition to her plus-size pointe shoes and mile-long eyelashes, the blond beauty also counts an Adam’s apple among her many attributes.
“Behind the lashes, I’m Brock Hayhoe,” the dancer says on a video focusing on the movers and shakers behind the all-male dance company known as Les Ballet Trocakdero de Monte Carlo. “When I put on my eyelashes, I’m Vanya Verikosa.”
Like his fellow dancers, Hayhoe travels the world with “the Trocks” dancing a variety of both female and male roles in a dizzying array of dances made famous by those pursuing a more traditional route to fame.
And, although Hayhoe has only been a member of the New York City-based troupe since 2008, the ballet—which is known to gently parody the dances it also reveres—has been around since 1974, when founders produced the shows in off-off Broadway lofts instead of fancy theaters in far-off lands.
But don’t let the word “parody” throw you. While it’s true the dozen-plus dancers sometimes poke fun at romantic and classical ballets, they do it with a hefty dose of professionalism. All of the dancers have experience with past ballet companies, and all must—like the women they emulate—learn to dance naturally in pointe shoes and tutus.
Hayhoe notes wearing a tutu was a little scary at first because he couldn’t see his feet. Once he got over the sensation of having a “big disc” surrounding him that prevented him from seeing past his waist, he says he learned to adjust.
When it came to wearing pointe shoes—those innocuous looking ballet slippers that enable dancers to appear as if they’re flitting about on the tips of their toes (which, ultimately, they are)—Hayhoe says it was a matter of enduring the discomfort until his body became used it.
“When you first start, it’s very painful,” he says. “You do get blisters, because your feet are so soft and they’re not used to it. Now my feet are as hard as nails, so it doesn’t really hurt me anymore.”
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