UP IN the dressing rooms, all traces of five o’clock shadow are being close-shaved away. Some last-minute de-fuzzing of long, toned legs might be afoot - why risk yesterday’s stubble snagging tonight’s tights.

However when it comes to checking out any sprouting chest hair? That firmly remains where it is, even if a tuft or two plumes over the top of a tutu. Because the Trocks - as Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo are affectionately known, worldwide - don’t make any secret of the fact that they are all men. Men who can put on satin pointe-shoes and rise to the demands of classical ballet choreographies as diva-tastic ballerinas in full dramatic slap and frou-frou tutus - but who can, just as readily, slip (literally) into goofball capers and do what audiences everywhere adore: they cock a snook at pristine Swans and Sylphs by tripping up or falling down in a flurry of hilarious mishaps.

It’s a well-honed regime that the Italian-born Raffaele Morra knows first hand, and has kept faith with ever since he joined the Trocks in May 2001. Morra was soon to become one of the company’s leading ballerinas, adept at switching between the skittish comedy and the genuinely expressive grace of an Odette in Swan Lake or the flirtatious finesse of a Kitri in Don Quixote. Nowadays, however, he’s chosen to be a busy Trock behind the scenes, happily in place as the company’s ballet master, teaching class and overseeing rehearsals as well as helping with the re-staging of additions to the repertoire

He’s still willing to get wigged-up, garishly costumed and back on-stage if necessary - “but more likely in one of the supporting male roles, or as a walk-on character part,” he says. “Not in pointe-shoes, no.” And he laughs, because time was that Morra - in his ballerina persona of Lariska Dumbchenkp - danced as if he had been born with little toe-block shoes already on his feet. “I think it’s only when you stop dancing these intensely demanding female roles,” he continues, “that you realise how much concentration and energy you have to put into every day’s practice. You can’t take any of it - the fouettes, the jetes and balances that you performed last time for granted. There is always something that you feel needs to be refined.You owe it to your ballerina self to be the best you can be. Always.”

Morra has a bone-marrow regard for balletic heritage and legacy - inter-linking elements that were melded into the DNA of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo from their first outing in an Off-Off Broadway loft in 1974. For sure, they were delivering spot-on parodies of classical ballet - and doing it ‘en travesti’ - but what really wowed audiences, and influential New York critics like Arlene Croce, was the fact that the dudes in tutus could actually dance,with serious aplomb, on pointe. This was no down-town drag act: these were men who had trained in dance but who - in the usual run of a professional ballet company - would never be centre-stage in the ballerina roles that are the stuff of legends.

Marius Petipa - the choreographer credited with the first incarnation of Swan Lake - is named in the Trocks programme as the company’s ‘stylistic guru’. It’s not some flippant little joke: the Trocks’ repertoire rejoices in the 19th century heyday of the Imperial Russian Ballet. It’s an influence that punningly extends to the cod Rooshian names of the ballerinas - Nadia Doumiafeyva is a prime example - and colours the deliberately heavy-handed make-up - bright blue eye-shadow, bright red lippy and five sets of false eye-lashes - that abets the transformation from street-smart guy into archly assured ballerina.

This particular tour - coming to Inverness and Edinburgh later this month - also highlights how the Trocks reach out to the kind of neglected gems that very few other companies set foot in. The mixed bill at Eden Court and Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre includes the exuberant, even razzle-dazzle delights of Paquita - a wonderful 19th century concoction of Spanish, French and Russian stylistic accents that result in flamboyant choreographic fireworks. Our own Scottish Ballet used to perform it as a finale to triple bills some 20 or 30 years ago but it faded from view over time. Now the Trocks, elegant and bold in ornately vivid tutus kick up their heels and go for broke to the music by Minkus - Petipa would have applauded their chutzpah.

For Morra, revivals like this are a hallmark of how the Trocks bring heritage and history to life in the 21st century. And if, in Les Sylphides, there are little hissy fits and silly spats, that’s no bad thing either. “We want our audiences to enjoy themselves, that really is the whole point of what we do.”

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo are at Eden Court, Inverness on Friday 26/Sat 27 october and the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh on Tuesday 30/ Wed 31 October