A Night at Le Moulin Rouge
Jim's Musings from Paris October 2022
I woke up Monday morning to discover that Cole Porter’s famous “drizzle” had descended upon Paris and that the neo-Fascists had won the election in Italy. I pulled the cozy French couette (duvet) over my head and promptly went back to sleep. It didn’t help. When I re-awoke several hours later, the day was still damply gray and Italy had moved so far right they were basically camping on Putin’s doorstep. Border wars and tensions were flaring up all across the globe, the Atlantic hurricane season had reached full fury, stock markets were falling, inflation and interest rates rising, a school shooting in Russia, earthquakes, typhoons, and it’s only been one week since the Queen was lowered into her crypt in Windsor castle. The second Elizabethan Age, the Belle Époque, had clearly ended and this new Carolingian Era was coming in with a roar.
As I read my daily news briefs and scan Facebook, I think about how I might put a positive spin on current events. France has been suffering from a major drought all summer. The rain is certainly welcome and needed to fill reservoirs and keep rivers flowing. Italy’s electorate may be nostalgically embracing Fascism, but, hey, the prime minister will most likely be a woman for the first time in the country’s history. Never mind that she’s xenophobic, pro-Putin, and anti-LGBTQ rights—among other things. What else can we see as a positive development right now in the world’s evolution? Israel’s prime minister has opened the door for a two-state solution, Europe seems united in its efforts to help Ukraine (at least until Italy’s new government weighs in), China has not yet invaded Taiwan, Joe Biden’s approval ratings keep going up, and JLo and Ben seem happy. It’s not much, but it helps to provide a little protection against the world’s general decline into decadence and decay.
I’m a bit sensitive right now because Jairo and I were caught up in the wave of decadence for several hours this past week when we found ourselves in Pigalle, sipping champagne at a front row table for the late night show at Le Moulin Rouge. How did that happen you might ask. Well, one of Jairo’s Colombian nieces was planning to visit Paris and because she was of the generation that had fallen in love with Baz Luhrman’s fantasy musical extravaganza, Moulin Rouge, she dreamed to attend the world-famous nightclub to see the actual floor show. I never really saw the film (it was 2001, after all) so my imagination of the Moulin Rouge was still populated with Toulouse Lautrec’s paintings and mid-20th century Technicolor movie musicals like Can-Can (1960) and the Lautrec biopic, Moulin Rouge (1952). When Ani asked way back in June if we wanted to go with her when she would be in Paris in September, we hesitated, at first. It seemed like such a touristy thing to do. Do Parisians attend Le Moulin Rouge? But, after some thought, we heartily agreed to reserve tickets for the late night show several months in advance.
I think it was mostly Jairo’s father who swayed our decision. Sabarain Cuesta died in 2005, but each time he visited Paris he liked to attend one of the notorious cabarets with the scantily clad chorus girls. He had seen them all: The Lido, Moulin Rouge, Crazy Horse. The last time he was in Paris (which was sometime in the late 90’s) he again had an urge to see a show, but Jairo’s mom didn’t feel up to it. Sabarain asked Jairo and me to go with him to the Lido. We had very little disposable income at the time and I couldn’t quite rationalize spending our few euros on such titillating (emphasis on the first three letters) entertainment. We agreed to drop him off and pick him up, but we declined to attend the show. I remember when we left him in front of the Lido on the Champs Élysée. I recall the cars passing by, the small crowd gathered in front of the iconic building, and the lights of Paris at night. Sabarain walked up the red carpet and through the tall doors, a man completely self-assured, a life accomplished. More so, I remember his excitement, satisfaction, and thrill when we picked him up two hours later. He looked ten years younger, smiling like a Don Juan. He had been to paradise… and I must admit I was a little jealous. It’s one of my few regrets that we failed to share this luxurious experience with Jairo’s dad. In honor of Sabarain, we decided to accompany Ani to Le Moulin Rouge and help her fulfill her dream.
Then the Queen died. Ani had given her passport to the British embassy in Colombia for a visa to enter the UK. Once they had the passport and the country went into mourning, it was impossible to get the document back in time for the upcoming trip. Ani never made it to Europe, so Jairo and I put on our sport coats and fancy shoes (the tickets clearly stated, “No athletic shoes) and we went by Métro to the Pigalle neighborhood for the Thursday night 11:30pm show at Le Moulin Rouge. The extra ticket went unused. None of our Paris family or friends could come with us. Like I said, “Do Parisians go to Le Moulin Rouge?”
Pigalle has not changed much since I first came to Paris in 1975. The main street is lined with sex shops, porno cinemas, girlie shows and other “Live Sex” enterprises. Propositioning to enter establishments or other diversions can happen just walking down the sidewalk. At least, that was true when Alex Nine and I visited the neighborhood a few weeks ago. Le Moulin Rouge doesn’t like to keep its patrons waiting on the street so they have devised a crowd control technique that weaves the queue upstairs and downstairs in the lobby while waiting for the doors to open. We were impressed by the number of people (the show was sold out) from all over the world and by the number of athletic shoes on display. It seems Le Moulin Rouge does not enforce its dress policy and we realized how difficult for some tourists it may be to travel through Europe equipped with more than one pair of shoes.
Once inside the doors of the grand cabaret, we were ushered to our seats, which turned out to be right next to the stage. Sometimes being too close to the performance area can be awkward, but this situation worked well. It was extremely comfortable. We were immediately served our champagne and as we sipped it, we surveyed the space and became acquainted with our neighbors. Seated next to us was a young woman from Canada. She was alone and, like Ani, was fulfilling a dream after having seen the film. There was also a couple from Raleigh, North Carolina. He was a hardware (or was it software?) salesman who had a personal quest to see all of Shakespeare’s plays staged in a ten year period. Unfortunately, his pursuit was upended by the pandemic. She was a gastroenterologist. They met during his colonoscopy.
And then the show began…
Now, I’m no prude and I certainly have seen my share of nudity onstage and have even staged some nudity myself, but the number of bare female breasts within the first two minutes of the show was impressive. At times there were maybe 60 chorus girls on stage and at least half of them were topless. There was also a bevy of chorus boys, but they remained fully clothed for the most part. The costumes were opulent and outrageous. The show moved with high energy from one choreographed number to the next with the dancers using almost Kathakali-like gestures, poses, and kicks. The music was canned, with the dancers lip syncing or singing along softly to the recorded voices. A few classic songs appeared during the hour and a half show, but it was mostly accompanied by forgettable French pop songs.
The show was entitled Féerie, but I failed to discern any kind of theme or storyline connected to the name. There were three acrobatic acts inserted between the production numbers and these were the highlight of the show: a couple on roller skates, a couple and a park bench, and two men doing contact, balances, and lifts. This male act was the only somewhat homoerotic moment of the evening. Otherwise, we were in hetero heaven. Or I should say male hetero heaven—because the objectification of the female body was beyond anything that I thought still existed in 2022.
The evening’s coup de théâtre was when the stage floor receded, revealing a large pool of water in which four large boa constrictors were swimming. From our ringside seats, we were able to look down into the pool and then watch the monster serpents poke their heads above the water and flick their tongues as the pool rose above our heads. A nearly naked woman appeared and dove into the pool to swim seductively with the boas, wrapping them around her body and slithering in and out of their embrace. It was horrifying and disturbing. I guess I’ve just never found large snakes very erotic. Or do I? Hmm…Calling Dr. Freud! Maybe there was another homoerotic moment in the show???
In any case, I was amused and energized by the most iconic act of the evening—the can-can. The show’s choreographers stayed fairly classical, with the chorus kicking, leaping, cartwheeling, screaming in high-pitched voices, and landing triumphantly in the splits. Here are two videos, one from the 1952 film, Moulin Rouge, and the other from the 1960 film, Can-Can. The one from Can-Can gives a very good indication of the staging of the current production’s number. Things haven’t changed much.
No, things haven’t changed much. The show ended and we rode the wave of decadence out onto the streets of Paris. We hailed a taxi. Our driver, a Parisian by birth, asked if we had been to Le Moulin Rouge. We told him yes and we wondered if he had ever seen the show. He answered that he had seen it a long time ago and that, yes, Parisians do go to Le Moulin Rouge. This news did not make me feel any better about the retro cultural propaganda we had just experienced. Why does this strange time capsule exist where social and sexual mores have remained frozen, unresponsive to the momentous cultural changes that have occurred in the last 100 years? Unresponsive even to Luhrman’s innovative, post-modern, and genre-breaking 2001 film that it inspired? And why does the public continue to tolerate and accept it? Oh, it’s just harmless entertainment, Jim, you say. But I say, no, it’s not harmless. It defines who we are.
I always told my students that theatre by its nature is political. And that even a Las Vegas floor show has a political message. So here I am having just seen a Parisian floor show and I’m wondering: what’s the political message? I’m having trouble finding a positive side to my response. How can we fight against the misogyny, colonialist attitudes, white supremacy, hetero supremacy, exoticization of the Other, and outright sexism that is on display at Le Moulin Rouge and being consumed voraciously by hundreds of tourists daily? Even Disney has tried to update its princess iconography, for Pete’s sake. I would have thought that more sensitive and perceptive productions, like those done by Cirque du Soleil, for example, would have had some kind of influence on these classic floor shows. But, no, it seems these shows (and much of Western popular art, I’m afraid) remain stuck in a time and place that refuses to move on and the putrid images and rotting messages continue to infiltrate and dominate our culture and our politics. Is it any wonder that Italy has turned again to fascism? Or that the USA remains entrenched in some kind of MAGA misasma? For every Will and Grace or Black-ish that breaks stereotypes and asks society to think differently about sex and race, there’s a Friends that insidiously undermines cultural change and intellectual values. For every Dix pour cent (Call My Agent) where women control their destinies and define themselves, there’s an Emily in Paris where women are what they wear, chase after men, and immigrants are shoplifters. Can we turn the tide, stop the wave of decadence and decay? It’s time that we privilege those artmakers who make new dreams, create new fantasies, tell us new stories about humanity that will allow us to evolve as a species. It’s time we stop feasting on beautiful lies and begin to relish the truth.
Thank you for letting me rant. If you have any thoughts or reactions, I’d love to hear them. I suppose there’s a lot to unpack here about art reflecting life and life reflecting art—and the value of anything we make as the world’s creators. Let me know what you think. Until next time…
Oh, if you’re interested in auditioning for Le Moulin Rouge, they’re looking for dancers. Here’s a link:
https://www.thestage.co.uk/jobs/theatre-vacancies/audition-london-moulin-rouge-2022
Beautiful writing, I loved it 🙏! Two steps forward, one step backwards… "c'est la vie!”