Home About Us Travel Tips Condition Useful Links Sitemap News Link to Us Tours Contact Us

<< back

How to fund your overseas strip
The beefy guard at the front door of the theatre asks me to speak French, which I do very badly, then waves me inside.

I'm taken backstage, past a filmcrew filming a Dutch dancer, and up a flight of narrow stairs into a tiny room.

It's the photo and postcard-filled dressing room of Jolene Slater, one of the head dancers at the cabaret.

With her tall but fine frame and heavily made-up face Slater could pass as French, but once she starts speaking English you know right away she's a true blue Aussie girl - originally from St Arnaud in central Victoria.

Slater, 30, has been performing with the company for the past seven years, five of them as one of three principal singer/dancers. She's one of around 20 Australian dancers.

It was quite quick, she says, for her to be promoted to that position after only two years.

"There are three (principals) - there's a blonde, a brunette and a redhead. I'm the brunette.''

As well as her dancing and singing and roles in the prologue and big finale, in the production of Feerie Jolene plays comic roles - a Siamese twin, a drunk at the beginning of the Can Can and Medusa.

Her reasons for heading to Paris were partly to travel but also to try out cabaret dancing - and you find the epitome of that style here.

"It's a different style, a different kind of genre of dance,'' she says.

"I did a couple of musicals before. Unless you're into the musical theatre scene or unless you're a teacher or unless you're in the commercial scene there's not a hell of a lot more that you can do in Australia.

''...you audition, audition, audition...and you try and get chosen for as many jobs. You never really have a secure job in Australia, not like here.''

She does two shows a night, six days a week. And every six months there's a changeover of dancers, allowing new people to join the show, with the Australians usually staying around one to two years.

Their numbers vary but they form the majority of the dancers - at present there's 21 girls and one boy.

Slater's married to a fellow dancer, Romanian, Alex (Nicolae Denes), who she met at the Moulin Rouge.

She says it's not uncommon for dancers to form relationships.

"There are a few married couples, some come as couples... a lot of couples meet here,'' she says.

"It's very much renowned for starting couples.''

The show's very popular with Australian audiences, particularly since Baz Luhrmann's film, which is said to have helped the company's fortunes when it went through rough times.

On this particular night the audience seemed to be predominantly Asian men. According to the establishment's figures, 50 per cent overall are French.

Most in the crowd seemed to love it - one of the less refined members of the audience, a male European, uttered loudly at the end: "Fifty naked pairs of breasts on stage!''

But it doesn't always receive 100 per cent approval. Our neighbours at our table left half way through.

"The man had mistakenly thought the evening would be a great surprise 50th birthday present for his wife. She was not amused.

"I'm a feminist and he thought I would like this?'' she said as she stormed out, after suffering through a few bare-chested numbers.

On an earlier winter's day, I meet another Australian in Paris.

This time it's photographer Carla Coulson, who suggests Le Philosophie in the Marai, not far from where she lives. It's a cosy cafe, where the waiters are not keen to give you the bill in a hurry.

But Coulson doesn't mind. As she sips spicy chai she tells me she's fresh from covering the Paris fashion shows, where she was almost bowled over by burly male photographers in between lugging heavy equipment from location to location on the Paris Metro.

It's nice to slow down for a minute.

Coulson moved to Paris five years ago after seven years in Italy (following her Italian boyfriend, Francesco, to France) and has documented her "behind closed doors'' views of what makes the city tick in a book, Paris Tango.

As well as telling her story mixed with interviews and observations about Paris life, it's illustrated with her stunning and unusual photos.

After all, she explains, Paris is where photography began.

"Henri-Cartier Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Brassai and Willy Ronis each photographed Paris and the Parisians in their own special way, capturing intimate moments of daily life that still have the power to make my heart sing,'' she writes in the Photography chapter.

But that vision had long changed, when she arrived in the most romantic of cities.

''...the berets have long been relegated to the hat stand, the moustaches have disappeared...and Paris today is a thriving multicultural melting pot.''

Among her interviews are couture genius Francois Lesage; renowned florist Djordje Varda; lingerie high priestess Chantal Thomass; master performer Frederic Malle and architect Renzo Piano, as well as ordinary Parisians such as her landlady who tells her the history of the Marais.

One of her infectiously enthusiastic chapters is all about the Moulin Rouge.

It took her months to be accepted to go backstage. She had to audition by presenting her folio and undergoing numerous interviews before being given the "green light'' to shoot.

"Going backstage is like being dropped into a psychedelic dream,'' she writes.

"Madness reigns.

At the end of a number, sixty beautiful women, some topless, rush backstage to change costumes, chatting away as naturally as if they were fully clothed.

''...It's toe-tapping stuff, and I can't help but grin from ear to ear with the pure joy of it all: I have arrived in my idea of paradise.''

She tells the story of how Jacki Clerico came to own the Moulin Rouge. He had lived in the world of cabaret since his father and uncle bought La Plage de Paris, when he was young.

They rechristened it the Lido and then in 1955 his father bought the Moulin Rouge.

"A Moulin Rouge girl needs to have dancing in her blood,' M. Clerico tells me,'' Coulson writes in her book.

It seems that many Australians have just the right ingredient.

 
Home About Us Travel Tips Condition Useful Links Sitemap News Link to Us Tours Ozzy Map Contact Us


Copyright All rights reserved world wide.

Ozzy Mood
is a trading name of
Holiday Mood Limited
66 Park Way
Ruislip Middlesex HA48NR
Tel: 0844 448 1461 Fax: 01895 674242
E-mail: sales@holidaymood.co.uk

Partner Sites: www.holidaymood.co.uk  www.indianmood.co.uk  www.africanmood.co.uk   www.dubaimood.co.uk  www.flightsmood.co.uk  www.jumeirahbeachdubai.co.uk
The flight bookings we make are ATOL protected by the Civil Aviation Authority, except when tickets for scheduled flights are sent to your within 24 hours of payment being accepted. Our ATOL number is 5934. We also act as agents for other ATOL holders. ATOL protection extends primarily to customers who book and pay in the United Kingdom
cheap flight to adelaide |  cheap flight to auckland |  cheap flight to brisbane |  cheap flight to cairns |  cheap flight to darwin |  cheap flight to melbourne |  cheap flight to perth |  cheap flight to sydney |  cheap flight to wellington |  cheap flight to ethiopia |  cheap flight to zimbawe |  cheap flight to egypt |  cheap flight to cape town |  cheap flight to east london |  cheap flight to george |  cheap flight to harare |  cheap flight to johannesburg |  cheap flight to nigeria |  cheap flight to zambia |  cheap flight to luxor |  cheap flight to morocco |  cheap flight to mombasa |  cheap flight to nairobi |  cheap flight to port elizabeth |  cheap flight to namibia |  cheap flight to tanzania