Feathers and Ponies – Ch 3 – Moulin Rouge (Patreon)

“Okay, I’m just going to pop you all in here for a moment while I go track down the key to Rich’s dressing room.”

Rich is the contortionist who is getting a few days off while we’re here. I’ve never seen her act before; I make a mental note to look her up when we get to our hotel and I can tap into some wifi.

Olivier takes us to far stage left. He pushes aside a section of the thick, heavy curtain that has been cleverly rigged to swing open like a door. Up a small step, through a narrow archway, a second curtain and –

We emerge into the warm light of the backstage. 

He inserts a key into a door immediately to our right. He jiggles the green-tinged lock a little to get all the tumblers to fall into place. Meanwhile, I’m greedily drinking in the riot of colours and textures in front of me: 

A line of hot pink feather boas explode off a head-height, horizontal pole on the left, like a row of fuschia foundations. On the right, neatly painted cubby-holes full of oversized clown shoes are stacked neatly next to billowing white shirts decorated all over with colourful trims and tiny mirrored appliques that reflect shifting shards of light onto the old red paint behind them.

A deep shelf is anchored to the wall, about 7 feet off the ground, curving all the way around three walls. It’s packed with head form after head form, each one sporting a headdress of sharp red feathers that sunburst out from a foundation of molded, sequined fabrics like so many ruby-hued haloes. 

Beneath the shelf looks to be some of the male dancers’ costumes. A red cloth is pulled down over most of this area – a dust cover, I guess – but one section is open to the air and I see glittering blue and white tops and bottoms, like marching band costumes made of stardust and sweat. 

My gaze drifts upwards – the ceiling is quite high, and hides yet more treasures: a clever pulley system is rigged off to the side, allowing one to raise and lower two more long horizontal bars of costumes up and down as needed. Dazzling silver bikinis glimmer overhead, amidst more enormous, wearable structures of red or blue or green feathers.

My mind drifts back to the mini-documentaries I gorged my eyes on before coming here, the countless internet articles I searched in my hunger to know as much as I could know about this place before coming here; knowing that a single atelier that is nearly as old as the Moulin Rouge itself

A doorway just past the clown costumes, on my right, reveals a wide staircase curving up and away to higher levels of the cabaret. At the back, a small hallway leads away to the left – behind the stage, to the other wing, presumably. 

To my immediate left, past the hot pink feather boas, is a massive cut-out archway that leads to the wings of the stage itself. Scene after scene after scene is lined up in a row there, toweringly high. They’re mounted on rolling tracks far above, out of sight in the gloom, for the multitudes of quick scene changes that happen over the course of the show. Constructed of thin wood, painted and decorated, they stretch some 15 feet deep back into the stage wing.

I wonder how old these scene are? I muse. I know that the Féerie! show has been playing here for some twenty-odd years now. But did it look like this for the shows that preceded this one? Did they save any of the old scenes and re-use them for this production?

“Alright, you can pop your bags and coats in here for now!” Olivier calls, snapping me out of my reverie. He’s opened the office for us – a tiny, irregularly-shaped corner-space packed full of everything a stage manager might need.

The floor is covered by a thick, brown carpet that muffles my steps into silence. An impressive collection of key hooks hangs on the wall immediately to the left of the door, next to a high shelf spilling over with costumes pieces of all sorts: a discarded pair of sparkling women’s heels, a few skirts hung up on pegs, feathers trailing in the breeze of our movement. The back wall is occupied by a tiny sink and a low desk with a wooden chair. A small monitor rests on the desk with a live feed of the stage displayed with muted colours and grainy resolution. The mirror nailed above the desk is covered in postcards and polaroids signed with long-dried ink and lipstick kisses; posters and photo portraits from decades past are pasted high on the walls, snugged up carefully in frames leaning against walls and up on shelves. It feels like layer upon layer of heartfelt happiness and history has been pasted together as the wallpaper holding this room together at all of its seams; all the flotsam and jetsam of a century of showgirls and circus artists, washed up on the shores of this one tiny corner of the Moulin Rouge.

“Alright,” Olivier says, handing a small keychain off to Thierry. “You can leave your things here for now, to bring up to your hotel after. Thierry will show you the way to your dressing room - it’s a little easy to get lost,” he chuckles. “But you’ll learn it quickly enough.”

I sit down on the floor to tug off my heavy winter boots, settling in next to one of the framed posters laying against the fuschia wall. The background of the poster is faded slightly, a creamy off-white. Bal du Moulin Rouge, Paris is scrawled across the top in red cursive. Beneath is a simple illustration of a dancer, all legs with a black satin top hat and gold-tipped black cane to match.

Thierry arrives and we follow him obediently out of the office and up the winding stairwell to the right.

We emerge in a long narrow hallway, devoid of activity at this early point in the day. The dancers won’t start showing up until 7pm. We walk past doors leading off either side of the hallway: one contains a small laundry area, another to a collection of dressing rooms, a third to a neatly organized storage area. There’s a row of vending machines selling plastic-wrapped pastries and candy bars and tall, cold cans of Fanta.

The hallway takes a 90-degree turn to our left and immediately I’m struck by a familiar smell— but one that is completely and totally out of place. The smell of hay and leather oil and large, warm animals.

I turn around to eyeball Jen and Troy, to see if they’re noticing the same thing I’m noticing. “It – it smells like horses, right?” I say quietly.

Jen nods at me. “Totally…!”

I am utterly and completely confused, I think, and then Thierry interjects:

“That’s because there are horses,” he says, looking over his shoulder with a mischievous expression. 

WHAT— !!!

“There are six miniature horses in the show.”

– WHAT –

“So of course we have their stall here.”

“Wait, do they live here?” I ask, the 12-year old in me barely containing themselves.

“Non,” he laughs. “They are driven in from the countryside every evening, they perform their two shows, and they are driven back out again.”

“Every night?!”

“Every night.”

I try to muffle the sound of my brain exploding as Thierry pushes open a wide, brown metal door on the left — wide enough for a very fat pony, I note gleefully.

Thierry is forging ahead without breaking stride, heading straight for another door on the back right wall of the room. My eyes gobble up as much as they can as we fly by.

The room is small, simple, and utterly out of place:

Small, square, green-blue tiles cover the floor instead of linoleum or wood. The left side of the room is blocked off by a low, dark wood wall and stable door, only a few feet high (definitely very small ponies, I think), and fresh, clean hay lays in a thick layer inside. The stall itself is not large — perhaps 10 to 12 feet long, at most. On the back wall are two small shelves made of the same dark, worn wood as the stall, with the names of what I can only assume are the regular equine performers written in small cursive with a black permanent marker on the lower edge of each one. A few (tiny) horseshoes hang on the wall, along with halters and lead lines.

I regretfully trot to catch up with Thierry and the others before the far door swings shut —

How many horses are in this show? I wonder. It’s either a very tight squeeze for a bunch of them, or maybe only a couple a night ... Knowing what I know of the Moulin Rouge, though — where more is more — somehow I doubt that this part of the show is limited to only one or two equine employees.