I LOVE LUCY )WITH TUTUS; LES BALLETS TROCKADERO DE MONTE CARLO HEADLINING CENTRAL REGION DANCE FESTIVAL

You don't have to love ballet to have a good time watching Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, says Tory Dobrin, the company's artistic director. If the old sitcom "I Love Lucy" is funny to you, you'll laugh at the Trocks.

The Trocks, a New York City company composed of 13 to 16 male dancers, parody classical ballet. Dancers named Maya Thickenthighya or Igor Teupleze perform "Swan Lake" and other classical warhorses with the best of intentions, but as with Lucille Ball sometimes things turn out differently.

Thursday night's concert by Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo will be the highlight when more than 200 collegiate dancers from the Midwest and beyond congregate at Southeast Missouri State University next week for the American College Dance Festival Association Central Region Dance Festival.

The screwball antics of Lucille Ball and friends are comparable to a Trocks performance, Dobrin says. "What she's doing fits into what we do. She does some broad humor and some subtle humor. There are lots of different characters and different situations."

Real ballet, but no girls

Foremost, this is a real ballet company, albeit a comedic one, distinguished primarily by its lack of women. But nothing about ballet is inherently more difficult or easier for males to do than for females, says Dobrin, speaking from a tour stop in Detroit.

"Men can do anything that a woman can do and women can do anything that a man can do."

But these men in tutus don't try to dance like women. "Women are going for lightness, delicacy and etherealness," Dobrin says. "We're going for the male attack, aggressiveness.

"That's what makes it funny. We're not trying to be female ballet dancers."

It would not be as funny if his dancers were not serious artists who train and rehearse just as rigorously as any ballet company does. "It would be funny for maybe 20 minutes," Dobrin says. "But I wouldn't want to pay for it or see it for two hours."

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo was founded in 1974 in New York City. Critics and audiences alike were amazed by their comic sense and professionalism and to see that men could dance en pointe. Since then they have performed in 49 of the states and have done six tours of South America and Mexico, three tours of South Africa and 23 tours of Europe.

In the early years, the Trocks had to special order their toe shoes so they would be big enough. Now manufacturers are making them bigger. Dobrin, a former dancer in the company, thinks the Trocks are the reason.

Thursday, the Trocks will perform Act II of "Swan Lake," when the wizard and the prince fight for the hand of the Swan Queen; "La Vivandiere," a satire on ballet's early traditions; "The Black Swan," the arrival of Odile at the palace from Act IV of "Swan Lake"; and "Gaite Parisenne," their own version of the classic.

Though some of classical ballet's pretensions are parodied, you don't have to know anything about the art form to get the jokes, Dobrin says, just as you don't need to be married to appreciate Lucy's relationship with Desi. "It's pretty universal."

Though some audiences are better than others, almost everyone gets what the Trocks are up to.

"There's always one confused person everywhere you go," Dobrin said.