Morocco Travel Information

By MAX COLCHESTER |The Wall Street Journal

After shutting his cabaret in France two years ago, Claude Thomas is bringing the cancan to a new frontier: the Islamic country of Morocco.

"In France, we have killed the passion for cabaret," says Mr. Thomas, citing a crackdown on indoor smoking and labor laws that restrict dancers. "I have come to Morocco to find it again."

In June, Mr. Thomas opened a 1,000-seat hall here called "Folie's de Marrakech," where he's adapting authentic French cabaret for a Muslim audience.

Belly dancing and singing are part of Moroccan culture, and the country is considered a moderate Islamic nation. But exporting a Western-style show where performers kiss on stage and women lift their skirts is still a delicate affair. Islam discourages women from revealing skin, and nightclubs with female dancers sometimes raise eyebrows here.
"I think this is a big mistake," says Abderrahim Bentbib, director for the regional tourism council. "I don't think we need this kind of spectacle."

On a recent Saturday, Mr. Thomas prepared to put on a show at his custom-built music hall that features a prayer room and a license to serve alcohol. As he waved his hand, adorned with a huge diamond ring, a waterfall sprouted from above the stage. "This," he says, "is show business."

Other entertainers have tried to bring cabaret to Morocco and have been unsuccessful. In the early 1980s, a troupe called the "Bluebell Girls" flew from Paris to dance in a Marrakech hotel, Mr. Bentbib says. The show lasted six months.

The 49-year-old Mr. Thomas, who has performed in cabaret shows from Japan to Las Vegas, became disillusioned with France in part because he thought regulations made it difficult to run a profitable cabaret. Labor laws meant he had to pay dancers for time they spent applying their makeup. France's 35-hour work week discouraged performers from arriving early for shows to warm up, he says. In Marrakech, he pays his dancers 5,000 dirhams a month, or about $604, far less than he paid them in France.

During a vacation in 2006, Mr. Thomas was walking in the dusty central square of Marrakech when he saw acrobats doing flips. "I was on the phone to people in Las Vegas trying to organize a new show," Mr. Thomas says. "Suddenly I looked around at the street acrobats and I thought, 'My dancers are here."'

Turning street dancers into cabaret performers was harder than he imagined. Reda Lahkloufi says he was horrified when Mr. Thomas asked him to shave his chest and wear tight, sequined shorts.

"I told Claude, 'Look, Muslims don't do that,"' he says, adding it isn't masculine. Mr. Thomas backed down and agreed to let him wear less-revealing shorts and keep his chest hair.

The cancan dances, a centerpiece of cabaret, made performers particularly uneasy. Male dancers raise female partners over their heads, and the women's thighs almost touch the men's faces. In France, these women wear G-string underwear and fishnet stockings.

The Moroccan performers insisted on wearing long, black leggings with padded underwear. They also slip on a pair of loose, green shorts underneath their skirts so they don't reveal their thighs.

In one number, lead choreographer Santiago Martinez directed a group of backup dancers to stand with their arms crossed above their heads. But the Moroccan dancers told him this was unacceptable for Muslims because it "reminded them of Christ on the cross," Mr. Martinez says. He told the dancers to raise their arms straight in the air and just overlap their hands a little.

One male dancer refused to kiss a female dancer on the cheek. To get him more comfortable with the concept of performance, Mr. Thomas spent hours showing him footage of Parisian cabaret dancers and the opening ceremony to the Beijing Olympics. "I needed to show him it was all an act," he says. The dancer ended up performing the kiss.

Fatima Fenanne, 18, felt awkward about doing a slow dance in the arms of a man. To teach her what to do, Mr. Thomas grabbed the man, held him close and looked deep into his eyes. "It was hard," Ms. Fenanne says. "I had never done this before."

Some performers' parents told Mr. Thomas they were concerned their daughters would hurt the family's reputation by appearing on stage, he says. Mr. Thomas invited the parents to rehearsals to make them more comfortable. One father dragged his daughter from the stage, Mr. Thomas says.

Male dancers were concerned that performing in the cabaret threatened their masculinity. Mr. Lahkloufi used to work on a construction site in Casablanca. After becoming a professional dancer, he was shunned by former co-workers who "couldn't understand what I was doing," he says. "They have no idea what classic dance is."

Preparing to open the venue, Mr. Thomas renamed it a "music hall" instead of the lewder-sounding "cabaret" on the advice of local authorities. He also sent a script to the regional governor. When Mr. Thomas got approval, a relative in France invested 8 million euros, or about $10.8 million, to build the hall, he says.

At the first show in June, Mr. Thomas took the stage in a black, sequined jacket. He stood in front of a giant, flaming heart and sang a French rock song. Later, a man in a long, red tunic rode atop a horse and freed a young woman from a cage. One thousand spectators packed the hall.

"I have never seen anything like this in Morocco," says Jamal Aboula El Yalp, who recently saw the show while visiting from Casablanca. "It's really great."

Attendance at the cabaret has dipped since the show first opened. One recent performance just after the religious festival of Ramadan attracted only a few dozen people. Hassan Ait El Madani, a Marrakech accountant, says he has nothing against cabaret, but wouldn't visit one himself. "Seeing dancers on stage is not something I feel totally comfortable with," he says.

Mr. Thomas is undeterred. "The high season is arriving," he told his dancers after Ramadan. "We must show who we are."

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