One of Paris's most famous cabarets is setting up a permanent home abroad for the first time, and it has picked an unlikely city: Dubai. Crazy Horse, the avant-garde Paris institution created by Alain Bernardin in 1951, opens its new residency on The Palm on November 12 — a show reworked to fit local sensibilities.
The big difference is obvious before the curtain rises. In Paris, Crazy Horse dancers perform largely nude, with dramatic lighting projections in stripes, polka dots and other patterns painting the body rather than costumes. The "Dubai Edition" keeps the signature lighting but adds clothes: the troupe's 18 dancers will perform in nearly 500 custom-made costume items, designed after what chief creative officer Andree Deissenberg describes as careful adaptation to local customs.
Everything else has been dialled up rather than down. The venue is an auditorium inside a plush shoreline resort on The Palm, with audiences seated in velvet armchairs and able to order dinner and drinks throughout. The staging is more opulent and spacious than the intimate Parisian basement where the show was born, and this edition even includes the first aerial act in Crazy Horse's history.
The road to opening night was not smooth. After spin-offs in Las Vegas and Singapore closed several years ago, the company signed a partnership with a Dubai-based French entrepreneur in early 2025, betting on a city of roughly 20 million annual visitors and a population that is about 90 percent expatriate. Then war broke out in the region, with The Palm itself hit on the first day of hostilities. The team briefly considered pulling out, but decided to push ahead — a bet that Dubai will remain a vibrant hub despite the instability around it.
For travellers, this is a genuinely new entertainment option in a city already thick with shows and spectacles. It's a chance to see a legendary French production without the long-haul trip to Paris, and the dinner-and-drinks format suits an evening out as much as a night at the theatre. Book ahead if your trip falls near the November 12 opening, when demand will likely spike. Just expect a tamer version of the Paris original — elegant, stylised and fully costumed.
Story first reported by Bangkok Post Life.
