FOR the first time since it began in 1889, Moulin Rouge presented a show in China as the hotel group Accor's salute to the French Culture Year in China.

Although it cannot be compared to the night club venue in France, the stage inside the Sofitel Jin Jiang Oriental Pudong Shanghai cost over 200,000 yuan (US$24,096), providing space for the intense 40-minute show.

More than 20 dancers, including two acrobatic brothers, presented Moulin Rouge's signature cancan, singing and breath-taking acrobatic performances for the select audience of about 100 spectators.

Before the event began, dancers could be seen doing stretches on the ground as usual, preparing for the energy-consuming show.

The small dressing room looked crowded with 20 performers and rows of hanging costumes, messy with cosmetics and wigs. However, everything in the backstage area was proceeding smoothly.

Each dancer has a number that is written on their hanging costumes, so they can quickly find their own clothes. Shoes were all put together in a box but the names of performers were written on their soles.

From the first day with the club the performers have done their own make-up for each show. Dancers have only one and a half minutes in the interlude to change clothes. Except for the principal dancers, each of whom has a dressing assistant, the rest of the dancers have to share a few assistants between them.

Janet Pharaoh, ballet mistress of the Moulin Rouge, is attentive to every movement, expression and even the make-up of the dancers from a seat in the audience. Starting her own dancer's life with the Moulin Rouge in 1981, Pharaoh came to her current position after 16 years of work.

"I became ballet mistress in 1997," she said. The past years have taken away her luster as a dancer but her slim, tall and straight figure is well preserved. Every year she has travelled to other countries to hold auditions to recruit new dancers.

"The height of the girls should be at least 172 centimetres and 183 centimetres for the boys," Pharaoh explained. All the candidates must be good at ballet, modern jazz and high kicks. Another important requirement is they should have good smiles. At present, the night club has 60 dancers, only five of whom are French. The rest are from more than 10 different countries, including Australia and Russia.

"We rarely make trips to other countries," Pharaoh said. To make the first and only show in China successful, she and her assistant have held several rehearsals to help the dancers familiarize themselves with the strange stage.

For this trip, the dancers brought four sets of costumes. The feathers and beads on the clothes are well maintained, even though they have been used for years.

"We change the costumes every seven or eight years when we create new shows," Pharaoh said.

The costumes, costing millions of euros, are designed by a team of specialists and washed and repaired by a group of eight workers.

Dream life

Rachelle Connors, one of the three principal dancers coming to Shanghai, has been a dancer in the club for 12 years. She seemed to be excited about her first trip to China.

The Australian dancer said she was lucky to be selected by Moulin Rouge at an audition in Sydney when she was only 18. Connors learnt ballet when she was little from her mother, a dance teacher, but she said dancers with the Moulin Rouge needed to be versatile - a point that was mentioned by other members as well.

Ben Nicolodi, the male solo dancer in the cancan, was an acrobat when he first entered the club. He started to learn cancan nine years ago.

Both Connors and Nicolodi have been with the Moulin Rouge for more than 10 years and the only reason they haven't left, they said, was that they were passionate about the "special" job. Even those who have resigned from the Moulin Rouge would have chosen colourful and picturesque jobs because they were once involved in such a special place, Connors told the Shanghai Star. "We're spoilt."

However, it's not an easy job for the performers, who usually give two shows every night. They have to work from 7:30 pm to 1:30 am every day and have only one day off every week.

Every dancer is weighed each month and the ballet mistress gives them a warning if they are overweight or too slim. Pharaoh said most of the time she needs to ask the girls to "eat more" because some of them are too skinny. Most of the women dancers keep to a weight of 55 kilograms.

During the day when they are not working and away from the glitter of the stage, they prefer to wear comfortable casual clothes, but they have to attend the gym regularly to keep fit. The daytime life of the dancers is quite routine and their social life is limited to their colleagues. "We go to bars together after the shows every day until 3 or 4 am," Connors said.

Therefore, love matches are frequent between the performers at the club. Connors thought men who they met in bars in the early hours of the morning were unlikely to be reliable. "So only those also working with Moulin Rouge can keep the same hours as we do and understand the job," she said.

Part of the show requires the women dancers to perform topless, a feature only presented inside the Moulin Rouge night club - never on tour.

Connor's parents supported her decision to join the Moulin Rouge at first, but they hesitated for a while after they discovered she took part in the topless dancing.

"After they came to France to see the show, they understood what I was doing," Connors said. "It's the French mentality. If someone has something beautiful, there is no shame in exposing it."

Unlike what was shown in the Hollywood movie "Moulin Rouge" (starring Nicole Kidman), dancers in the Moulin Rouge don't have to deal with harassment from spectators. The stage is quite a long way from the audience and there is no contact between the dancers and visitors in the night club.

But they do have some "small privileges". The female dancers never need to wait to be seated when they go out to restaurants, since they are celebrities in the neighbourhood and allowed in anywhere at once.