SINGAPORE, 20 Oct 2017:
Singapore’s iconic Marina Bay Sands has opened its doors to the French cabaret Crazy Horse, known for its topless female dancers – a decade after a franchise club failed in the conservative Southeast Asian city-state.
The Crazy Horse cabaret theatre, a Parisian institution for 66 years, opened a club in Singapore in 2005 when the city was trying to spice up its image as part of a tourism revamp. The theatre closed its doors two years later due to poor ticket sales.
This week the cabaret was back with “Forever Crazy”, a compilation of memorable Crazy Horse routines from the past six decades that recently played in Australia.
Crazy Horse tour director Mark Brady said the Singapore show was not censored by authorities. “It’s the original production as we’ve just performed in Australia for nine weeks,” Brady said. “We’re not changing anything.”
After the red carpet premiere on Thursday Oct 13, audience members praised the show – with some saying they hadn’t even thought about the nudity, and others saying it showed Singapore was becoming more “open-minded”.
“We want to show the beauty of what we do, the entertainment value of what we do, and the uniqueness of what we do, so we try to be very much true to what we do and who we are, but also very respectful of the country we go to,” said creative director Andree Deissenberg while sitting in the original Crazy Horse saloon in Paris.
Arts, entertainment and other forms of media are tightly regulated in Singapore, which the government says is necessary to maintain social stability. Last year, a same-sex “peck on the lips” was removed from the musical Les Miserables after public complaints. Sex between men is illegal in Singapore.
When issuing a license for Crazy Horse, the Infocomm Media Development Authority appeared to accept the organiser’s argument that the show was a form of art.
It said in an emailed statement it “aims to strike a balance between reflecting generally accepted social norms, while giving due consideration to the event’s artistic merits.”
The show runs for 12 nights in Singapore before moving to Macau. It is restricted to those of 18 years of age and older.
– Reuters