Paris Blue December 1992 by Toni Bentley Is a woman naked if her skin is covered, head to toe, in body makeup (#004 by Dior), her head is crowned with a glittering silver wig, her eyes are framed by thick black lashes, her lips are stained deep red, her pubic hair is shaved and painted into a perfect black triangle and her whole body shines under soft pink beams while small crosses of light cast their shadows over her? Watching the show at the Crazy Horse Saloon, a nightclub deep under Paris' fashionable Avenue George V, there is reason to wonder. It begins with the realization that the creamy-skinned figures on the stage are real, living, breathing women, or are they? The champagne is poured, the orchestra kicks up a lively jazz beat, the red room goes black and the shimmering pink curtains part to reveal a row of twelve young women in tall black busbies, like female guards from Buckingham Palace -- in someone's dreams. Metal studded collars support a single strap that extends between their naked breasts down to their waists where a slim white sporran hangs in traditional Scottish fashion. White gloves and black garters, stockings and boots complete the stunning uniform. Each bosom, stomach and thigh is perfect, and glows like translucent velvet. The women salute and march in place, knees lifted high, and then, suddenly, pivot to reveal twelve perfectly round and smooth behinds. These, too, glow. Forty-one years after its opening the Crazy Horse remains the chicest strip show in the world. This is the most tasteful display of what is usually regarded as the sleaziest of entertainments, but then it is French. It claims the rare, paradoxical position of being the epitome of both elegance and eroticism, two qualities that other practioners of this difficult art have yet to master. The clumsy efforts of American nightclubs, where the talent is often minimal, the music deafening, and the silicone breasts ubiquitous (the Crazy Horse would never allow these predictable, gravity-defying entities on their stage,) simply do not have the erotic sophistication of the French original, and are usually downright frightening. Going to the Crazy Horse is more like attending opening night on Broadway. The tickets are undeniably expensive -- approximately 100 dollars. The men dressed in suits, the women in silk and Chanel No. 5. There is a low, excited buzz of anticipation in the air. But, most significantly, no one is there with any purpose other than entertainment -- this is not a procurement site and women are physically and emotionally safe. Approximately one third of the audience is women, and their apparent appreciation for the women onstage underscores the attraction and the romance of the Crazy Horse. As Darci Kistler, the celebrated New York City Ballet dancer and occasional visitor to the Crazy Horse, says, "I think every woman has a desire to be seen that way. Women like to be seen -- not exploited -- but seen. It’s rather like looking into a kaleidoscope -- so close, so intimate, yet a fantasy. There's part of you that can identify. It's powerful, and it’s untouchable, -- it’s the joy of being nude." Curiously, the women perform as if clothed, adhering to the strict choreography without giving any apparent thought to being overtly sexy. These are girls dancing -- who happen to be naked. The bodies onstage are mesmerizing: slim yet curved, long yet round, athletic yet soft. The faces are fresh, serious and exotic. A Crazy Horse dancer is not the girl next door; she’s the fantasy of the girl next door gone wild. She does not imitate or suggest the sexual act, and no male ever shares the stage with her. The Crazy Horse is a veritable fortress of femininity -- ironic and sophisticated. But it is also deeply erotic -- an eroticism shaped someone who clearly worships at the altar of the female nude. It is the fantasy of Alain Bernardin -- founder, owner, and, in his own way, artist. When he was twelve and attending a priest-run boarding school in Versailles, Bernardin had a vision: "I saw a young girl walking toward me on the street in a shirt, a plain, tight blue shirt. Her nipples were pointing. I was so excited, so impressed." The image became his icon and his inspiration for the Crazy Horse. The nightclub first opened for two weeks in May 1951 and then promptly closed for three months. "The first show was very, very bad," Bernardin admits. He knew that he wanted a woman to strip, but, he says, "I didn't know how to do it. How can you stage something you've never seen in your life? Where do you find the girl who will do that? What kind of music?” He wanted something totally different from established revues like the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère where topless girls were featured as decoration in the swirling spectacle of animal acts, singing, mime, wrestling, sword swallowing and costume parades. Bernardin wanted the girls to be the show itself, to breathe, dance, strip, entertain – there should be no distractions. In skipping feathers and fountains Bernardin went straight to the source: the mystery of a naked woman. In America, where nudity is often considered shameful, Bernardin would never have succeeded. "Sexual exhibitionism, which most people find sleazy, has a sacred tradition,” says Camille Paglia, author of Sexual Personae and most recently, Sex, Art, and American Culture. "A naked dancing woman is one of the great mythological symbols. There's something serious going on [when a naked woman dances]; there is an undertone. The mystery and allure of the dancing woman is that she conceals the inner thing we can never see. So even though she's totally nude, we still cannot see the womb from which we all came. She is always beckoning us, drawing us -- saying, ‘Come hither, come hither,’ -- but she'll always escape. She is mistress of the universe." But there is another, more conscious fascination with the nude display: It is the public presentation of the forbidden. This not only breaks the rules (in itself a erotic event for a society that sees nudity, even in children, as having a moral component) but it is done, at the Crazy Horse, in such a highly stylized and ritualized manner as to take on the qualities of art. The unmistakable trademark of the Crazy girls -- the cambré du corps (bending of the body) -- illustrates the point. In direct contrast to ballet where the hips are forward, back straight and legs turned out, this deep arching of the back exaggerates a woman's natural curves and, as Bernardin explains, gives them “nice smooth rears.” (Look at the hip profile of any model photographed in tight clothes or lingerie: she's swaybacked.) To complete this youthful image, chests are pushed forward and out, shoulders back, magnifying the arcs of the body seen from any angle. This extreme visual stance is not simply the product of these young women's nudity or proportions, it is a much-rehearsed, much-practiced, and perfected silhouette. The girls don't rehearse naked (except, of course, in dress rehearsals); precision, style and rhythm are what make a dancing body look good, naked or clothed. There is no need to rehearse natural attributes. Choreographer George Balanchine was a longtime fan of the Crazy Horse. "It's wonderful the way in which they dress the body, in which they cover it with lights," he said. "I find that interesting." He advised his own stage managers to take a good long look at Bernardin's various stage effects -- especially the lighting -- and invited dancers from the Crazy Horse to watch his own company when it performed at the nearby Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. The interest of a classical artist like Balanchine in the craft of Bernardin's strip goes to the heart of the anomaly of the Crazy Horse. Both Balanchine and Bernardin perfected, in their own way, an image of woman -- desirable but unobtainable, tantalizing yet unknowable, and almost ruthlessly independent. For both, what was finally important was what is not seen, but what is merely suggested. "The imagination is more important than what the audience actually sees," says Bernardin. “You see only one thing but you imagine a lot of things. Eroticism is like a mountain -- you can't see it all at once." It is here, balancing on the line between good taste and vulgarity, that Bernardin's real genius lies. Has he ever gone too far? He is almost indignant at the suggestion. "Never. Why would I?" Some think otherwise. There was the act with the nun ... While Bernardin has dressed his girls in crosses for years ("I didn't wait for Madonna") this nun wore a wimple -- and very little else. There is one kind of teasing, however, that Bernardin has banned. Although contact between performer and audience is a common affair in the world of cabaret, it is strictly forbidden at the Crazy Horse. "It spoils everything. It is giving what you don't want to have. If a girl comes up and kisses you and leaves red lipstick, she makes a fool of you, as if sex is something to play with. No, it is something very serious, like death, like religion." "God is in the details," quotes Bernardin after Mies van der Rohe, and there was one detail that bothered him for years, and his search for a solution culminated in the small black triangle that rivets, and mystifies, today's spectators. Even in the intimate setting of the club -- where you could reach across the footlights and touch a girl -- it appears that the women are wearing a neatly tailored black patch, a cache sexe (literally "hide the sex") presumably glued on in some curious fashion. This was, in fact, the case for the first twenty years of the Crazy Horse's existence. "It was so frustrating," says Bernardin emphatically. "You can never know how important a woman's sex is to a man." He pauses. "It is paradise." Since, according to Bernardin, "everything is allowed until it's not allowed," one night in early 1970 -- with the approval of the local police chief and his wife -- the cache sexe became history at the Crazy Horse. But what to do instead? Bernardin is a connoisseur of his territory. He draws a triangle on a piece of paper while explaining, "Everyone must have black, ten centimeters [four inches] by ten by ten. Like a painting, like a Modigliani, everyone the same. You cannot have a girl with eye makeup and lipstick and not have makeup there. She looks unfinished. Having a black sex makes her beautiful." Black Leichner pancake makeup precisely painted with paintbrush and toothbrush completes the "costume". The larger triangle formed by a woman's eyes, mouth and sex is, to Bernardin, her "face." While this literally applies to the nude dancer, the image symbolizes an interestingly integrated metaphor of a woman's identity; it does not ignore or undermine (whether out of misogyny, fear, or prudery) the deep, often unfathomable, power of her sexuality. All this exposure, and yet the twenty-two women of the Crazy Horse live like nuns, their convent being the plush red velvet underworld of the Crazy Horse backstage. It is only on stage, at performance time, that any nudity is allowed. The women are almost entirely isolated -- they are forbidden to ever be visible to the audience anywhere except onstage and are never to be found in any of the theater's public spaces -- they are even discreetly chauffeured home each night by assigned drivers, and their contracts are canceled immediately if they are found speaking to a customer anywhere. Even in the offices or meeting areas backstage nudity is forbidden, as is any contact, even a "bonjour," with any of the male personnel. Between the dressing room and the stage the girls are separated from the stage hands and musicians by a tunnel of tall slats of blue wood. The final few feet leading onto the stage itself are divided by a thick white line, which the sexes are not allowed to cross. Elaborate measures like these make it easy to believe that the Crazy Horse employs both virgins and married women, and that they have little trouble remaining so if they wish. What kind of girl works at the Crazy Horse? Though there is surely some healthy narcissism involved, vanity alone could never sustain such long hours and arduous work days. With sixteen shows a week and daily rehearsals and costume fittings the dancers are often in the theater for over twelve hours a day, sometimes seven days a week (the Crazy Horse is open 365 days a year). Any notion that these women lead a wild private life is quickly dispelled. They are working women. An outsider's preoccupation with their nudity is more than matched by their own disinterest in the fact. "My parents don't have a problem morally with what I do because I don't have a problem with it," explains Teasy McDonald, (Bernardin rechristens each dancer with a stage name for entertainment as well as protective reasons.) McDonald, 24, is the only American dancing at the Crazy Horse and likes it that way. Originally from Frisco, Colorado, she took ballet and jazz classes as a child and later attended New York University, majoring in dance. A trip to Paris was a graduation present from her parents and she was so taken with Europe she decided to stay. After doing several Moulin Rouge-type cabaret shows in Korea, Germany and southern France -- "feathers, sequins, glittery bikinis and fishnet hose" -- McDonald decided that she would like to call Paris home and auditioned at the Crazy Horse. "Actually I had never seen the show when I decided to audition, but its reputation was very good. I had done topless in Germany and decided it was no big deal. The girls were just as nice whether they went topless or not." Two days before her audition she saw the show and her question was no longer "Would I do this?" but "Could I be in this show?" The curtain parts on the fifteenth number of the 24,659th performance of the Crazy Horse. The twelve dancers are in full costume: a silver-beaded cloche. The music is slow and sweetly sad. Though highly choreographed, the women hardly move but rather take one sculptural pose after another on the stage's moving floor. As they are carried smoothly and invisibly to the center of the stage, each, in turn, steps quietly, proudly through an archway of blue neon -- the only prop on stage -- and is transformed into a translucent being. The lighting is soft and subdued, and there are no smiles on the mournful faces. This piece is titled "Adagio D'Oltre Tombe" -- "Adagio Beyond the Grave." "All my life I wanted to do this," confesses Bernardin. Of over 250 numbers during the last forty years, this one is his favorite. Bare women barely moving, sculpted by light, paying homage at an unseen tomb. It suggests an afterlife full of life. It is a poignant, personal image. These are Alain Bernardin's angels.

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