From Palmy to Paris
As famed showgirl Marissa Burgess, left, opens her Cabaret de Paris here this weekend, Margaret Austin recalls the life-changing experience of dancing with the notorious Folies Bergere.
Palmerston North where I was brought up in the 1950s was a bleak place. It was still post-war, and conservatism bordering on repressiveness was the theme. The only excitement was provided by the railway line that ran through the centre of the town – until the city fathers thought to remove it to the furthest reaches.
My beautiful spirited mother, a former school teacher, was typically proper. She produced the thinnest possible cucumber sandwiches for afternoon teas with the female intelligentsia of the town. My father, much older, was distant, mysterious, and had been a reporter on Truth .A neighbour once told me in hushed tones that he had also frequented the opium dens of Wellington’s notorious Haining St.
I respected my mother and adored my father. The two extremes they represented were to form the parameters between which I’ve lived my life.
My mother’s influence was the easiest and most obvious one to follow – obedience to authority, academic success, appropriate friends – even a stint as Sunday School teacher. Thence to Wellington and Victoria University, where, to the strains of ‘If you’re going to San Francisco’, I fell in love. I should have become a school principal.
Instead, married, living in Port Chalmers in a cottage that overlooked a graveyard (was this a hint from the universe?) I accepted the invitation of two female friends – single – to spend three months in Italy. My liberal husband let me go.
The damage was quickly and irrevocably done. Stunned by an old culture and new experiences, there was no way I could be content with New Zealand again.
So I set off to the other side of the world once more – on a passenger liner because that’s what you did in the seventies – and took six weeks to get to England.
Kiwis are taught to have high expectations of London, yet I found myself disappointed, because, despite its size, there was too much that was familiar.
It wasn’t until I crossed the Channel that my nameless yearning morphed into an unexpected, extraordinary reality.
I discovered Amsterdam. Intending to spend only a few days there at the tail end of a summer European tour, I ended up staying three years. I graduated with self-acceptance, far more understanding and tolerance of fellow human beings, an enhanced sense of fun, and an even greater eagerness for the unknown.
Fast forward to Paris.
Awarm summer night in 1980. The Rue du Faubourg Montmartre. Down one of the side streets, you suddenly catch sight of the neon-lit facade of one of the world’s most celebrated music halls – the Folies Bergere.
The night before, in a bar, someone tipped me off to jobs going in the chorus line of this illustrious establishment. I’d already been refused work in a club just off the Champs Elysees – the choreographer had been sympathetic, but no, she needed girls with more shape.
So, with only a little dance training, without knowing anyone, without a CV, and without an appointment, what was I doing here? But once through the stage door, when I requested to see the artistic director, no one turned a hair.
I was shown into an office, and had just time to take in the posters of semi-naked women which adorned the walls, when Michel Gyarmathy appeared. This man was a Paris legend, having come from his native Hungary as a youth and promoted his talent by drawing costume designs on the pavements outside the Tuileries ... though I didn’t know that then.
He was short, pink-complexioned, elderly, and formidably imperious. To forestall him, I spoke at once.
In bad French, I came out with: ‘‘Good evening Monsieur. I am a dancer, and I heard you are looking for girls for the chorus line. But ...’’ – and I had to get in before he did – ‘‘I haven’t got breasts.’’
What I meant to intimate was that I had a small bosom, and that this might be a drawback, but in my picturesque French, that’s how it sounded!
Gyarmathy’s face remained expressionless.
‘‘Madame,’’ he intoned, ‘‘are you a woman?’’ ‘‘Yes,’’ I replied. ‘‘And you are not a man?’’ was the next question. ‘‘Well, no,’’ I said. My interrogator’s next question knocked me for a six.
‘‘Are you, by any chance, a transvestite?’’ Dumbfounded, I stayed silent. ‘‘You are a woman,’’ declared Gyarmathy, with a faint smile. ‘‘Therefore you have breasts. You wish to work in my theatre. Let us have a look at you. Undress yourself, Madame.’’
And he swung on his heel and left the office.
My bluff had been called! I hadn’t known what to expect as the outcome to my gate-crash – the last thing I’d thought I’d get was an onthe-spot audition.
There was nothing else for it. I stripped off my clothes down to my knickers, thrust my feet back into the Good evening Monsieur. I am a dancer, and I heard you are looking for girls for the chorus line. But ... I haven’t got breasts. high heels I’d worn, took one more nervous look at the poster girls around me – and Gyarmathy was back.
He eyed me narrowly from the doorway.
‘‘Put your hands on your hips and walk towards me,’’ he commanded. ‘‘Smile.’’ I smiled, imagining my mouth full of perfect teeth.
With another faint smile, my interlocutor pronounced the verdict.
‘‘Very well, Madame. You shall have what you came for. I am offering you a job in my theatre. Come back tomorrow for your first rehearsal.’’
And that is how a 34-year-old exSunday School teacher from Palmerston North – with very little dance training and very small breasts – talked her way into the chorus line of the Folies Bergere.
It’s been described as a pleasure factory. Its mystique, glamour, and superficiality all enchanted me. I was known as a ‘‘mannequin nu’’ or naked mannequin. My colleagues and I were packaged in monstrous sets of false eyelashes and all-over pancake makeup until we all looked the same, then wheeled out to perform routines in which we all made identical movements.
Three hundred workers were involved in getting the production under way and moving every night. There were performers, stage hands, dressers, electricians, and those who looked after the props. Performers were strictly ranked – the female stars, the classically trained dancers (who did the can-can), the featured performers, and finally, on the bottom rung of the ladder, us mannequins. Distinguished by the larger amount of flesh we had on display, our work required the least formal training.
Actually, performing six nights a week was a bit like school. The theatre was run with clock-like precision. The timetable was the same every night; there were bells and carefully intoned instructions piped into dressing rooms; there were black marks for lateness; there was even a genial headmaster to keep everyone in order.
Monsieur Jacques nicknamed me ‘‘la petite Anglaise’’ (New Zealand? – where’s that?) and treated me with indulgent curiosity.
The Folies was famous for the number of tableaus it was able to mount in the space of a three-hour show – there were 40, with different costumes to go with each. That meant a backstage crew of dedicated individuals working fulltime to maintain costumes and accessories.
My best friend in the dressing room was Aude, who sat next to me. Classically trained, she was unable to find work appropriate to her level, and had to make do with the chorus line. The others were a mixed bag – and included girls from the French colonies. Night after night, I watched with fascination their transformation from plain to pretty, and from pretty to stunning.
Side-saddle on my white wooden horse during the finale of my last performance, the whole panoply of the Folies revolved before me – first the applauding public, then the froth of feathers that marked the stars lineup, then the wings and the watching stage hands, to the face of my favourite dresser visible above a bundle of boas, and finally to the mannequins, smiles deep-frozen.
The stage braked – and stars, dancers, crew and mannequins made for the wings.
I followed more slowly. The machinery of the Folies Bergere, I reflected, would work just as well if one of its parts was replaced overnight.
Iwas to return to New Zealand in the late 1980s, with the manuscript for my first book under one arm and a second husband under the other. The book went on to be published, though the husband got crossed out in the proofreading process.
After 14 years away, what was it like to be back in New Zealand? With no drug dens to explore, no music halls to gate-crash, no film stars to come across in night clubs … what was I to do?
Most difficult of all was the question, or the challenge, of how to somehow put to use what I’d learned. Particularly when a good deal of what I’d learned was in direct conflict with what I’d been taught. For instance, that you could make friends with drug addicts, sex performers, and people you met in bars; that being naked or nearly so for work was quite the norm for some people; that to stay up all night because you were having so much fun didn’t hurt; that above all you needn’t listen to those around you who say ‘You can’t do that’.
My family accept me – albeit with bemusement. New friends have largely replaced old friends.
I give dinner parties in my home on Wellington’s city fringe. There’s a new vocation as an Airbnb host – and along with that a mission: world peace through hospitality, respect, and laughter.
Down the road there are Sweet Mother’s Kitchen and the Basque Bar and Courtenay Place.
And a tango floor that beckons regularly.