The China Mail - Paris cabaret world mourns veteran Moulin Rouge director

Pharaoh, who grew up in northern England, died suddenly last week after a battle with illness. She was 65.

Mourners flocked to a funeral service on Tuesday morning at the American Cathedral in Paris, with dancers from the current 90-strong Moulin Rouge troupe carrying her coffin.

"She was like a mom to all of us," Ernesto Martinez, a 41-year-old from Cuba, told AFP outside. "The Moulin Rouge is like a big family, and she's the creator of that."

Pharaoh took over as "ballet mistress" at the Moulin Rouge in 1997, ending her own on-stage career at the venue to manage the performers just as the owners were going through financial difficulties.

The company went bankrupt the same year.

But along with her partner Jean-Jacques Clerico, a member of the family that has run the birthplace of the can-can since 1955, she helped turn its fortunes around.

New management, a new show and the hit 2001 Baz Luhrmann film "Moulin Rouge!" helped modernise the image of the Montmartre landmark, making it one of the city's best-known tourist attractions.

- 'Loved a smile' -

Pharaoh worked behind the scenes, recruiting women from around the world with the right height, build and character for the demands of high-kicking and dancing twice a night in large feathered headdresses.

"She certainly raised the standard of the dancers there. And she loved really hard-working and high-energy dancers," Shay Stafford, author of "Memoirs of a Showgirl" about her career in Paris, told AFP by phone from Australia.

"And she'd always say 'I love a good smile'," she added.

Moulin Rouge spokeswoman Fanny Rabasse, who worked with Pharaoh for nearly 30 years, said her talent was finding young dancers overseas.

"She'd say 'she's a chrysalis and she'll turn into a butterfly' and she really knew how to accompany them in their careers," she added.

Stafford remembers first rehearsing Edith Piaf's "La Vie en rose" when she arrived in Paris, with Pharaoh translating the French for her line-by-line while using a hairbrush as a microphone.

- 'Quite British' -

Creative director in overall charge for the last decade, she was still attending shows every evening until recently, with the Belle Epoque dancehall and its famed red windmill almost a second home.

The mother-of-one gave regular feedback, attentive to whether the can-can performing "Doriss Girls" were kicking high enough and whether standards were being maintained.

Instructions were issued in a thick Yorkshire accent developed during her early life in Leeds or in heavily-accented French which she sprinkled with English words.

"She remained very British even though she lived in France," said Rabasse.

One of her last creations was working on a dance routine for French television at the Arc de Triomphe on New Year's Eve, part of a long-standing expansion of the brand beyond the confines of its Paris home.

The Paris Olympics opening ceremony last year also featured Moulin Rouge dancers, but the experience left Pharaoh crestfallen after rain made the ground slippy and spoiled the performance.

After her sudden passing, the show must now go on without her, with tourists still queuing up for tickets for the prime-time 7:00 pm dinner and dance that starts at 255 euros ($280) per person.

"As soon as she was around, she had this energy about her that just lit up the room, you could just feel her," current dancer Jasmine Bard, 26, from Australia, told AFP. "It's definitely going to be missed."

C.Fong--ThChM