Can Can!

My very first showgirl job was at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. I was straight out of college and had absolutely not been prepared for what was to be expected of me. I was hired as a covered dancer, for which the punishment was the Can Can...

The biggest shock of all when I first watched the show, which at the time was named "Femmes, femmes, femmes", was not the bare breasted ladies but the bare bottomed everyones! Having never been exposed to a G-string and worn my ballet leotards around my knees, seeing that many buttocks all on one stage was quite overwhelming.

The Can Can was absolutely terrifying. Twenty girls on stage kicking, cartwheeling, screaming, and jump splitting...horrendous! At the time the master of the Can Can was an Italian bast...I mean gentleman, named Ruggiero. He seemed adorable at my audition but after my first Can Can rehearsal I realized that the charm was a cover for the torture he enjoyed inflicting.

Every day we would rehearse for three hours with the relentless Italian and a chair that he dragged around like a bullfighter and made us kick over. We'd cartwheel for hours, then learn to cabriole, (sort of a split legged handstand) and finally cathedral, which is balancing your foot on your partners foot while it is extended at eye level then holding hands and arching backwards...while avoiding the other girls that are spinning and cartwheeling around you.

I did eventually master and enjoy the Can Can once I got over my fear and realized the only way to get through it was to scream at the top of my lungs...but had a few other problems on my first contract at the red mill...

At the top of the show four of us would descend on an elevator from the ceiling as our beautiful and talented vedette, Debbie, sang to the unsuspecting audience. To pre-set on the elevator and be stored in the ceiling, we had to climb a ladder. Well, one day I climbed the ladder a little late and in my haste tripped...and fell about thirty feet on to the stage where Debbie was singing.

Debbie turned around astonished to be joined by such an ungainly sight (thank goodness I didn't actually land on her) and I jumped up mortified and ran back up the stairs to rejoin my elevator mates. I noticed a few audience members pointing and looking shocked, but thought I'd just scared them, and kept on dancing, it didn't cross my mind that I might be hurt, until my dance captain yanked me off the stage and pointed out the deep gash exposing the bone above my knee. I promptly passed put and was rushed to the emergency room for 42 stitches...at least it got me out of the Can Can for a while!