French cabaret show Crazy Horse brings its brand of nudity to Hong Kong

IN THE RED FOYER of Crazy Horse on the Avenue George V, just by the red stairs that lead down to the red theatre, there's a black-and-white photo of its founder, Alain Bernardin. This is the man who, in 1950s Paris, opened up a club where the waiters dressed as cowboys, the band played country and western, and punters were encouraged to try out square dancing.

Bernardin was so fond of all things North American, he placed a Canadian Mountie on a horse at the entrance, and decided to call his new saloon after a Native American chief. Luckily for future marketing purposes, the name he chose wasn't Sitting Bull.

By the summer of 1953, his business was about to bite the dust. But Bernardin happened to see a film about American burlesque, and that gave him an idea. Out went the cowboys, the country and western music, and the quaint dancing. In came nakedness, champagne, and girls with nipples exactly 21cm apart and tummy buttons 13cm above their pubic bones.

The only remnant of the club's earlier incarnation was the Mountie (the horse trotted off to more sane pastures), and you can still see one stationed outside the cabaret every night.

Such is the Mountie's iconic status, the producers of
Le Crazy Horse Paris: Forever Crazy, which arrives in town in September, are hoping to install one in the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (APA). But it's fair to say that most people don't go to Crazy Horse to see a man in a uniform. They go to see a line of women in uniform: the opening number of every Crazy Horse show for almost 25 years has been
God Save Our Bareskin.

The women wear - pun alert - bearskins, and re-enact a version of the Changing of the Guard that would certainly be unrecognisable to Buckingham Palace; it involves military buttons marching down naked chests, and tails covering naked behinds. There's much stomping to and fro, wheeling about, and jiggling of perfect flesh while orders are barked offstage.

If it looks deeply regimented, that's because it is: each woman is specifically selected, wigged, and painted - they use 500 litres of body make-up each per year - so that it's impossible to distinguish one from another.

This gives a wonderfully irrelevant quality to the cast biographies Crazy Horse hands out, which consist of nationalities, star signs, and hair and eye colour. It's like describing the jockeys' socks at Happy Valley.

Appearing in Hong Kong, for example, will be Jette Lag (Italian, Gemini, light brown with brown eyes), Loopy Alibi (French, Scorpio, chestnut with brown eyes) and Viola Waterloo (French, Capricorn, dark brown with brown eyes).

These, of course, are not their real names. One of the pleasures (relatively minor, to be sure) of wandering back-stage at the Crazy Horse mothership is reading the notice board with its rehearsal notices and holiday schedules for Trauma, Dekka and Psykko ("a very sane girl", says the PR helpfully).

The dancers - Crazy Horse only employs professionals - spend three months unlearning fusty classical requirements, such as tucking in your behind and having a straight back. At Crazy Horse, you have to arch your spine and stick out your butt, like someone wearing an invisible crinoline.

Once the technique has been learned, a dancer is "baptised" by the management. She has the right to refuse the first suggested name, but after that, she's stuck with her new persona. She can never speak to anyone from the audience, she can never have a boyfriend on the premises, and she must go home in a taxi every night.

It sounds as rigorous as a convent. Indeed, someone's fixed a photo of Pope John Paul II to the wall in the dancers' private relaxation area, which is absolutely forbidden to men. But nobody seems to mind living such a controlled life, judging by the beautifully compliant pair who are wheeled out to answer questions.

"Coming into this nice place is such a dream," says Gloria di Parma. "We are laughing a lot," agrees Jade d'Or. They look astonished at any possibility of feminist objections. "If they are coming," says Jade, a little sniffily, "then they don't understand the show. It is the woman who is the queen. We are more on the side of the feminists than the contrary."

To cover their crotches, the dancers wear identical merkins - a vision which brings to mind a gathering of Hitler moustaches. "The girls are dressed by light," Jade explains patiently. "You can't believe they're naked."

Naked couture is the preferred term here. Fashion-house associations are big at Crazy Horse. Andrée Deissenberg, formerly Cirque du Soleil's sales and marketing director and Crazy Horse's lively managing director since 2006, has a photo of Jean Paul Gaultier on her mood-board: he's just been in to see the show.

Christian Louboutin does the Crazy shoes. The last time Crazy Horse performed in Macau, at the Wynn, it was a private event for Prada.

Macau is rather a sore point for the cabaret show. There's a long-running show there which everyone is at pains to point out bears no relation whatsoever to Crazy Horse Paris. ("Shame on them!" cries Deissenberg.)

The one at the APA will be the real thing. There will be Crazy Boutique items, the horseless Mountie, and the APA's lighting system will project displays onto 10 girls' naked bodies. (Under-18s are banned and anyone with epilepsy should give the show a miss as some of the strobe lighting
could melt anyone's neural pathways.)

Of course, you won't be able to quaff champagne, as they do in Paris, but that leaves more time for sober reflection on the craziness of it all.

48hours@scmp.com

Forever Crazy
The Lyric Theatre, Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, September 11- 19; Inquiries: 3128 8288. hkticketing.com