What Exactly Are The Ballets Trockadero Parodying?

New Yorker critic Arlene Croce [once] asserted that the Trocks weren’t addressing gender roles, but ballet roles, an altogether different topic: ‘a ballerina isn’t a woman but an abstraction of one.’ This distinction is politically and analytically useful: It aligns the Trocks squarely with high art, and makes clear that they aren’t – as some critics have said drag does – making fun of women. But it’s also wishfully tidy.”