Paris rejoices as Moulin Rouge windmill sails turn again year after collapse

The sails of the red-painted windmill on top of the Moulin Rouge, the most celebrated cabaret in Paris, have begun turning again, restoring the home of French can-can to its full glory more than a year after they tumbled inelegantly to the ground.

In a profusion of red feathers, members of the Montmartre institution’s 90-strong troupe performed its signature dance on the road outside to mark the occasion on Thursday night, after the second of two daily performances that draw 600,000 visitors a year.

The 12-metre sails collapsed in April last year after a mechanical failure, injuring no one but sparking an outpouring of emotion including from the Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, who called the cabaret a vital part of the capital’s cultural heritage.

“The sails have always turned at the Moulin Rouge, so we had to restore this Parisian symbol to Paris, to France, and to the state it was in before,” said Jean-Victor Clérico, the cabaret’s managing director. The sails will now rotate daily from 4pm to 2am.

“The whole troupe is very happy to find our sails again – these are the sails of Paris,” said Cyrielle, one of the 60 dancers who took part in the street celebration, which was illuminated by a specially commissioned firework display.

Founded in 1889, the Moulin Rouge became a global symbol of fin-de-siècle Parisian nightlife, its famed can-can dancers depicted in paintings by artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. An eponymous 2001 film by Baz Luhrmann cemented its present-day appeal.

The French can-can is believed to have evolved from the final figure of a dance for couples known as the quadrille. It caused considerable scandal when it first became popular as a cabaret act mainly because of its intentionally revealing high kicks.

Performed by a line of female dancers, the dance, devised in the early 1920s by Pierre Sandrini, then artistic director of the Moulin Rouge, revolves around the “vigorous manipulation of skirts and petticoats, high kicks, jump splits and cartwheels”.

After their collapse, new aluminium sails were ready in time for the Paris Olympics last July, but it has taken almost a year to build and fit a new electric motor ready to turn them and power the hundreds of red and gold bulbs that stud the display.