“You’ll see plenty of naked girls,” the woman said, and raised her eyebrows. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was wondering why I would want to watch a cabaret!
But when one is in Paris, some touristy concessions are permitted. One more visit to the Louvre, another look at the Eiffel, and at night, the cabaret, of course.
The French consider the cabaret show a part of their national heritage. The “cultural phenomenon” has come a long way since Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, in the late 1800s, first immortalised the dancers of Moulin Rouge in a series of paintings and posters. Today, the dance club with the iconic red windmill competes with many others, which promise shows that combine sensuous acrobatics with technological visual wizardry.
Among those who couldn’t resist the cabaret’s magnetic pull was the Prince of Wales and future Edward VII, who visited the Moulin Rouge in 1890. Decades later, Queen Elizabeth II arrived for an exclusive show. Hollywood greats Marlene Dietrich, Liza Minnelli, Ginger Rogers, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra have been a part of its special shows over the years. Even the classical dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov created for it an original ballet by Maurice Béjart, and designer Christian Louboutin fashioned unique red-soled shoes for the Crazy Horse girls to kick up their heels on stage.
The cabaret and its dancers have been celebrated in films, documentaries and TV shows.
Having grown up on Helen’s cabaret numbers in film after Hindi film, seduced by the display of a variety of wigs and flamboyant costumes worn over skin-coloured bodysuits, my first visit to a cabaret in France proved both shocking and an eye-opener. Helen’s gyrations, uniquely and enchantingly hers alone, were nevertheless bound by set parameters. The dancers in France were daringly different.
After visits to Moulin Rouge, Lido and, most recently, Crazy Horse, it became clear to me that their shows work around themes. Each of the three cabarets I saw created its own signature shows to stand apart from the rest.
Moulin Rouge goes for spectacle and period dramas, telling stories of opulence and decadence. It boasts nearly 1,000 costumes embellished with rhinestone and feathers for its Faerie Show alone. Moreover, for decades, every one of its shows has included the can-can that Toulouse-Lautrec made famous. The Lido has created skating rinks and swimming pools as the setting for its shows. Its 40 dancers have been painstakingly trained in ballet for its slickly produced, contemporary extravaganzas that combine acrobatics with dance, giving both a sexual edge. No less than two million crystals and 200 kilos of feathers go to make all that razzle-dazzle.
As for the Crazy Horse’s Totally Crazy! show, it is just that. In number after number, the nearly naked dancers come dressed in nothing but lighting effects. Coloured bars of light, silhouettes, polka dot patterns... the lighting technology teases, beguiles and seduces.
The dancers move in perfect sync with the music and the changing lights, which dress and undress them by turns.
Two offstage singers with amazing voices move among the audience, pushing the excitement up a notch. And when the two gifted male dancers do a comic tap dance coda, the audience is given time to exhale!
Crazy Horse prides itself on its bevy of 30 dancers, who are of near-identical height and body shape. Wigs, jewellery and make-up — all 500 litres of it, including 300 specially made Crazy Red lipsticks — do the rest of the magic to make them look like clones of a perfect prototype. The club hires ballet dancers and converts them into Crazy Horse dancers. They can seduce with a wave of the hand, or by simply throwing an arched look at the audience. Each of the dancers goes through six pairs of shoes and 2,500 pairs of stockings in a year.
The difficulty in being able to quickly tell one dancer from the other, even as they change costumes from a ballgown to a topless ensemble, ensures each of them remains mysterious and out of reach.
Every one of these cabaret houses has hundreds of aspirants hoping to make it as dancers, and they come from almost every part of the western world. Russian ballerinas, East European acrobats and contortionists, French and Spanish singers and dancers. Celebrity directors and music composers sign up to create productions that are unique.
Of course, the shows include champagne and dinner on order. And the stage, halls and seats create their own comfort and magic.
Little wonder that, night after night, week after week, year after year, the cabaret shows run to full houses. Wild, sensual, exciting... and plenty of near-naked girls! France wouldn’t want it any other way.
Sathya Saranis a journalist and editor based in Mumbai