Managers at the Moulin Rouge yesterday insisted that the cancan would go on, despite a frou-frou among backstage staff who are picketing the Montmartre music hall.
Patrons arriving for tonight's two performances of the £75-aticket Formidable dance show will be ushered in through emergency exits at the Moulin Rouge to avoid a picket by the communist-led CGT union in the redvelvet entrance hall.
The audience at the Moulin Rouge may also be treated, as it was last Saturday, to the sight of placard-bearing strikers pacing the stage during a dance routine of high-kicks, feathers and sequinned bare breasts.
Union members among the music hall's electricians, scenery shifters and dressers have been on strike for a week over the nonpayment of a long-service bonus which they claim is owed to 19 of them.
Yesterday, amid rumours that the show's 100 dancers were unhappy about their conditions and might join in, managers were getting their petticoats in a twist. "There must be no more talk of this strike," a spokeswoman said tersely.
"The show will go on. The strike has nothing to do with the Moulin Rouge which has 280 happy employees. These strikers are employed by an outside company on contract to us," she said.
An off-duty bouncer at the music hall said: "The atmosphere is awful. There were scuffles at Thursday night's picket, and the dispute looks like it will spread."
One dresser said: "The management has offered us 1,500 francs (£150) to be divided between 19 people. It is an insult."
The music hall, inaugurated in 1889, and whose dancers were immortalised in the last century by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, is one of three theatres in Paris staging themed dinner shows.
Cabaret artists who have performed at the Moulin Rouge there include Edith Piaf, Josephine Baker and Maurice Chevalier.