Moulin Rouge madness comes to Warwick
June 1, 2007 
A former performer at the famous Moulin Rouge Club in Paris is bringing her skills to the town of Warwick with her corseted can-can group, Les Follies.
Jo Penton will showcase her troupe of 24 can-can girls at the Warwick International Festival on June 30th.
Ms Penton performed at the Moulin Rouge Club for two years in the early 1990s and has also can-canned her way through numerous festivals and tours all over the world, but she says nothing was like the experience at the infamous Paris venue.
"The Moulin Rouge is the ultimate venue for the can-can where it has been performed since the 1800s. We had rehearsals throughout the week which would last all day and then had to do two performances in the evening too - the training was very disciplined," she told Warwick Today.
"We would get ready into our costumes, and be able to hear the audience and the music starting from the stage. The club had a strong feeling of history and you had a sense that it was a real part of France's culture. It's the only place I've worked where you would come off stage and the audience would still be clapping all the way back to the dressing room - they absolutely loved it."
Although Les Follies is different from the original can-can, which was supposed to be provocative, the girls still wear the full traditional costume with frilly skirts, petticoats and knickers with many layers and corset tops, as Ms Penton says the costume is vital to the performance.
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