Fourteen months after their accidental fall, the wings of the Moulin Rouge are turning again

"The whole troupe is very happy to find our wings again, which are the wings of Paris," Cyrielle, one of the 60 dancers at the Parisian cabaret, told AFP.

Shortly before 11 p.m. (9 p.m. GMT), these decorations, with a diameter of more than twelve meters, came to life thanks to the start-up of a brand new, custom-made electric motor.

For the occasion, the Moulin Rouge troupe performed in front of the establishment, in a profusion of swirling red feathers symbolizing the awakening of the wings.

Several hundred onlookers came to witness this revival, bringing traffic to a standstill on this busy boulevard in northern Paris. On the roof of the establishment, dancers celebrated the revival with fireworks in hand.

"I love cabaret, music hall. It's a really nice, almost moving moment," said Stéphane, 46, who didn't want to miss the event.

On April 25, 2024, the cabaret immortalized by the painter Toulouse-Lautrec in the 19th century and by Baz Luhrmann's film with Nicole Kidman (2001), woke up without its wings.

They fell during the night without causing any injuries, due to a failure in the central axis, creating stupor among the residents of the district and beyond.

In their fall, they had taken down the first three letters of the name of the place hanging on its facade in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, at the foot of the Butte Montmartre.

Four red and gold blades

Remaining open since the accident, the Moulin Rouge is particularly renowned for its French Cancan, the traditional, wild dance from Offenbach's mid-19th-century operettas.

On July 5, 2024, a week before the Olympic flame was to pass through for the Paris Games, the Moulin Rouge inaugurated four new wings, a mix of aluminum and steel, but the new motor needed to rotate them was not ready in time.

"The wings have always turned at the Moulin Rouge, so we had to give this Parisian symbol back to Paris, to France, and to the state it was in before," Jean-Victor Clérico, general director of the establishment, which attracts 600,000 visitors each year, told AFP.

From now on, the Moulin Rouge's wings will rotate every day from 4:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m.

Illuminated by hundreds of red and gold bulbs, now low-energy LEDs, they first turned on October 6, 1889, when the cabaret opened.

With its 90 artists from 18 nationalities, the cabaret offers two performances 365 evenings a year, in a whirlwind of feathers, rhinestones and sequins, bringing together a total of 1,700 spectators, half of whom are foreigners.

On stage, the troupe - including the iconic "Doriss Girls," named after Moulin choreographer Doris Haug - presents the revue "Féérie" at 9:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., a tribute to the circus and the City of Lights from 1900 to the present day, before the unmissable French Cancan.

In the same family for four generations, the Moulin Rouge created last year within its walls a "city of artistic crafts" bringing together the last French featherwork and embroidery workshops, labeled Living Heritage companies.