Sarah Tandy, Lead Dancer, from West Lothian
‘The Moulin Rouge was my first job – there’s a very family feel backstage’
This time I’ve been with the Moulin Rouge for twelve years. The Moulin Rouge was my first job out of college – I auditioned in Edinburgh when I was 18 and got the contract that afternoon. That was the last time they auditioned in Scotland so I was very fortunate. A month later I went into rehearsals but only stayed for a year and a half – I was young, I wanted to travel, so I worked on cruise ships and did a couple of tours with the Moulin Rouge, and it was on the tour to China when they asked whether I wanted to come back. So six months later there I was. I’ve been there ever since.
The Moulin Rouge was my first job and there’s a very family feel backstage. The management are very involved and it’s all very close-knit. It gets very tiring because we work six nights per week, but we get five weeks of paid vacation. There are 60 dancers on stage, plus some replacements who cover days off because the Moulin Rouge never closes, except for once when the company went to London to perform for Her Majesty the Queen.
There are 14 nationalities in the company. Number one is Australia, then the UK, then France. They do a lot of auditions in Australia as they are very tall out there – girls have to be a minimum of 1.75m (5ft 9in). We’ve got one girl, Megan, who is 6ft 2in, which is the minimum for the boys.
We have 20 male dancers, who are an important part of the show. My husband is one of the dancers. He’s Australian, but we used have a couple of Scottish men too.
My husband and I are actually partners on stage. It’s great fun. It works really well and it’ll be strange when we don’t do that anymore because we’ve done that from the beginning of our relationship. We met there.
I grew up in Whitburn, West Lothian, and started dancing at five at my local dance school. I then went to college in Preston for three years. One of my first auditions was the Moulin Rouge, and after living in such a beautiful city I can’t imagine not being there. It’ll be strange to move back to Scotland one day.
I got one of the principal roles about five years ago so I don’t dance the can-can any more. For me that’s a good thing because the can-can is a very hard dance to do, especially when you have to do it twice a night – it really takes a toll. We have osteopaths three times a week, so they take great care of us.