One by one, they slip down to the splits, painted faces registering woe, dismay or seething indignation.Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, founded in New York in 1974, truly love ballet. There’s a real Sylphides going on amid the pratfalls: Lariska’s jet?may thump, but her pas de chats are unexpectedly delicate. The Trocks push ballet to joyful extremes, but they never neglect its discipline.The odd thing is that Les Sylphides is no longer performed much in Britain The Trocks’s choice can be both loyal and adventurous. Yakaterina Verbosovich and “Prince” Myshkin perform The Flames of Paris pas de deux.

This Soviet rarity, coached by the Kirov-trained Elena Kunikova, was danced almost straight – even her tricolour tutu is authentic. It was sensational.Verbosovich (Chase Johnsey) has an enviable technique. She sails through the hops on pointe, turns crisp, fast fouett?- then does the sweet head-tilts with manic exaggeration. As Myshkin, Fernando Medina-Gallego punctuates his spins and jumps with grand heroic poses.Go For Barocco is the Trocks’ salute to Balanchine, all black tunics and thrust hips – which, on this company, look downright alarming. As in so many Balanchine ballets, the corps join hands and wind through complex patterns. In Peter Anastos’s choreography, you can see disaster looming from a long way off Yet each catastrophe has its own surprises. The corps don’t just get in a tangle, they do it in helplessly strict rhythm, driven into deeper trouble by the music.Olga Supphozova (Robert Carter) gives a grand diva account of The Dying Swan, shedding several pillows’ worth of feathers as he goes.

His back and shoulders are stronger and more fluid than many renditions I’ve seen. And I love his way of striking poses of noble refinement, then sizing up the audience from beneath his thick eyelashes.The final Raymonda’s Wedding is a chance to bring on plenty of soloists, with everybody being insanely Hungarian. Kilroy Wazir (Joseph Jefferies) is a hero who barely dances, just throwing off gestures that take credit for everyone else’s efforts. As so often with the Trocks, the facial responses are irresistible, from slow-on-the-uptake to instant resentment.’Sacred Monsters’, to 23 September (08707 377 737).

Tours to Snape Maltings on 24 & 25 November Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, to 30 September (08707 377 737). *Paul Merton, star of Have I Got News for You and Room 101, has signed up with Random House for a serious book on comedy. He’ll explore not the stand-up variety, but silent comedy and, with it, the early days of Hollywood. Publisher Nigel Wilcockson, who defected recently from Penguin, believes Merton will bring “a comedian’s insight to bear on the art of making people laugh”. *Joanne Harris’s wittily subversive heroine from Chocolat, Vianne Rocher, will return next May – this time in Montmartre – in a new Doubleday novel, The Lollipop Shoes. The Barnsley bestseller has signed a new deal with Transworld.