Just for kicks

The most famous windmill in the world is not in Holland but a shabby square in one of the seedier areas of Paris. But it is almost as iconic a Parisian landmark as the Sacre Coeur and Notre Dame. The Moulin Rouge (red windmill) is as old as the Eiffel Tower and as much of a French institution. Its colourful history is peopled by legendary figures, from artist Toulouse- Lautrec to music-hall star, Mistinguett.

Created by impresario Joseph Oller as a vast pleasure palace with a music hall, huge dance floor and gardens graced by a gigantic stucco elephant, the Bal du Moulin Rouge – to give it its proper name – flung open its doors in October 1889. From the very beginning, it was a veritable melting pot. The smart set from the more desirable parts of town slummed it with the distinctly lower-class locals who performed for their entertainment and titillation.

These days, there's an opening-night buzz every evening on the pavement outside the Moulin Rouge – despite the fact it's almost a decade since the current show, Féerie, premiered. But the crowd which forms an expectant queue at the entrance is as eclectic as ever. There are bus-loads of tourists, hand-holding honeymooners, gaggles of hen parties, French folk in furs, flashy Russians flouting the "elegant attire" dress code. Name a nationality and it's represented in the crowd – and in the Moulin's glamorous, 60-strong dance troupe, the Doriss Girls.

A swell of chatter and pop music greets you in the lobby and, once you've checked your jacket into the cloakroom, you're shown to your lamp-lit table in the vast theatre by one of the many waiters who swarm around the reception desk. Some are decked out in white buttoned-up jackets and others sport red jackets and bow ties. Red, unsurprisingly, dominates the decor too. It's bordello chic on a grand scale.

The waiters' different uniforms signify rank: there are no fewer than 16 head waiters at the Moulin, plus 22 "station" waiters, 28 assistant waiters, six glass keepers, two cellarmen and two pages. And the service is brisk, efficient and Jeeves-like: champagne (included in the price of your ticket, whether you have dinner or not) appears in your glass without your even realising there's a waiter beside you.

Back in the 1890s, absinthe was the drink of choice and fine cuisine wasn't an option for Moulin visitors. What drew the crowds was the promise of decadence and seeing such local celebrities as La Goulue (the Glutton) and Jane Avril, the two dancers who became muses to the painter du jour, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. They were star attractions, thanks to their uninhibited nightly performance of a rowdy and acrobatic eight-minute quadrille, christened the French cancan by a British music-hall producer. This frenzied, frilly knicker-exposing dance was considered so risqué that it had been banned from the British stage.

At the Moulin, it became the programme highlight: just before ten o'clock each night a crowd would form a circle around one male and three females on the dance floor. The dance – comprising high kicks, turning on one leg while holding the other almost vertical, cartwheels and, finally, the splits – was quite a sight and it has been a mainstay of the Moulin shows ever since, along with the lively Offenbach musical accompaniment. Perhaps surprisingly, it's not the finale of the Moulin's current show, but it certainly leaves the audience wanting more.

The Moulin became the launch pad for a string of legendary French stars, most famously the Queen of the Music Hall – Mistinguett. She made her debut in 1907 but enjoyed her heyday during the 1920s, one of the Moulin's greatest eras. In a four-year period, she starred in three wildly successful shows, and helped put the Moulin on the map.

During the late 1940s and 1950s, a string of big names headlined the shows at the Moulin, among them Edith Piaf, Yves Montand, Charles Trenet and Charles Aznavour. Even after the present format – a twice-nightly performance of a four-part revue, with variety acts interspersed between the parts – was established in the early 1960s, there would be the occasional show by an international star such as Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Liza Minnelli or Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Of course, one of the best-known aspects of the Moulin Rouge experience is nudity. This goes right back to the late-19th century when one of the most popular draws was the Cleopatra procession, featuring a nude Egyptian queen carried by four men and surrounded by barely clad girls. Nowadays, nudity means topless – the novelty of which wears off pretty quickly.

Much more striking is the fantastic array of costumes (there are 1,000 in the show) worn by the dancers who, in keeping with the celebrated revues of the early years, portray a succession of exotic characters – Arabian princesses, oriental queens, circus folk and pirates.

The look from start to finish is completely OTT, camp and tongue-in-cheek. It's cheesy rather than sleazy. Indeed, with its garish colours and flamboyant costumes, there's a cartoon quality to the whole experience. It's Disney with tits.

n Bal du Moulin Rouge, 82 Boulevard de Clichy, 75018 Paris (metro Blanche). Tickets e89 or e99 (£70.50 or £78.40) for show only, including half-bottle of champagne. Show with dinner, e145-e175 (£115-£139). Visit www.moulinrouge.fr or tel: [phone].Secrets, sequins and high kicks – backstage at the Moulin Rouge

One of the biggest draws in the 1890s was Le Petomane (Farting Man). Thankfully, his popularity fizzled out.

The acclaimed French writer Colette (author of Gigi) started her career as an actress, and appeared in one of the Moulin's more controversial revues in 1907.

Edith Piaf performed for two weeks at the Moulin immediately after Paris's liberation, and introduced audiences to the first songs she had composed herself, with her collaborator Marguerite Monnot.

The Moulin Rouge has been immortalised in numerous films, including five movies entitled Moulin Rouge, most recently the 2001 Baz Luhrmann musical (right). Other notables include John Huston's Moulin Rouge (1952) (left), with Zsa Zsa Gabor; Jean Renoir's French Cancan (1954), with Jean Gabin (who began his career at the real Moulin), and Can Can (1960), with Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine.

Since 1963, the title of every show has begun with the letter 'F'.

The minimum height for a Doriss Girl is 1.75m; the maximum is 1.79m.

The 17 lavish sets in Féerie, the current show, were made in Italy by craftsmen who also work for the Paris Opera.

Four of the stars of Féerie appear only underwater, in an aquarium: these are the pythons, with whom two of the Doriss Girls are trained to work.

La danseuse Ecossaise

Incredible as it seems to her today, Sarah Heron, now 26, had never heard of the Moulin Rouge when her mother told her that they were recruiting dancers in Edinburgh. The West Lothian teenager was fresh out of dance college and Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! had not yet been released, but desperate for the chance to travel, and encouraged by her parents, Heron went along for the try-out.

She was offered a contract on the spot and, at 19, took up her starting position as a Moulin Rouge dancer – on the cancan line.

Over a café crème in the trendy bar where the Doriss Girls – founded by choreographer Miss Doriss in 1957 – hang out before heading to work next door, Heron, a tall, slender brunette, explains how every one of the female dancers starts out on the gruelling cancan line. "It is the most tiring dance, so it tends to be the newer and younger girls who do it. I was glad to stop after six months."

From the cancan line, they progress to the "dancer" or "nude" line, which involves being topless. After several months of working in the Moulin, most dancers are comfortable with the idea of this, and it certainly seems a preferable option to risking their hamstrings on a twice-nightly basis with the cancan. However, Heron was taken aback when – having danced at the Moulin for only four months – she was asked to learn one of the solo parts, for which going topless was required.

"I called my mum and dad in tears," she remembers. "I said: 'Mum, they've asked me to do soloist and I have to do topless and I just can't...' Then my dad came on the phone and said: 'Don't be so bloody ridiculous. You're going to miss out on a major opportunity if you don't do it.' He told me that they would be proud of me no matter what. And in the end it was fine, because you actually forget that you don't have a top on because you're concentrating so much on the choreography."

At the Moulin, there's a prestige to being topless. Not only do the new girls have to serve their time doing the cancan before they can get on to the nude line, it's the principal girls – the main stars – who are the first to go topless in the show. Everyone else follows. So toplessness is a sort of badge of honour.

Not everyone back home saw it like that. Heron laughs as she recalls how, following a story in a local magazine about her, concerned customers at her parents' restaurant came to break the news to them that their daughter was a showgirl at the Moulin Rouge. "They obviously thought mum and dad were going to be ashamed and devastated, but they're very proud and even put my picture up on the wall for all the other customers to see!"

Her Scottish friends often forget that being a Moulin Rouge dancer is not all glitter and glitz. It's hard work, with itchy wigs, heavy headdresses and over-enthusiastic tourists thrusting cameras towards your cleavage. Heron and her colleagues dance two shows a night, six nights a week. The dancing is so strenuous that they are discouraged from doing any additional exercise. Heron says: "If I go to the gym, I'll lose too much weight and they'll be angry with me. They keep a close eye on everyone and if they see you're losing weight, they'll take you upstairs and tell you to keep an eye on yourself and make sure you're eating properly."

From the outset, Heron felt looked after by her employers. When she arrived in Paris, she was put up in a hotel and given a starter pack, including metro tickets, to help her find her way about. "It was really scary at first," she admits, "especially since I didn't really speak any French. Everyone was very welcoming, though, and some older, English, girls took me under their wing. Unfortunately, they left after six months and I had a hard time for a while, but then I began doing other things in the show and got to know other girls."

There's no age limit for dancers – "we have had a 17-year-old and a 40-year-old" – and many of them go away and come back, even after having babies. "A lot of the girls are in their thirties," says Heron. "And we've got a couple of mothers. It really depends on the girls and their bodies." Heron's first stint at the Moulin lasted 18 months; she then spent three years dancing on cruise ships, before returning to the nude line in 2005.

The Moulin Rouge is unusual because the same show runs for a decade at a time, so despite a three-year absence, Heron returned to Féerie, which she knew. "It was the same show, and I went straight back into my line," she recalls. "But a few new girls had joined while I was away, so that was different."

Féerie is due to end its run in 2010, and both Heron and her Australian boyfriend, David, who is one of the 13 men in the troupe, are very keen to be part of Moulin history by dancing in two consecutive shows. "It's very exciting," Heron enthuses. "The show closes completely – there's no overlap at all – while they gut the place and build new scenery. During that period of two or three months, we'll just be rehearsing for the new show. It will be very strange."