Are Nude Cabarets Still a Thing? Paris's Crazy Horse Will Tell You Yes.
Crazy Horse Paris Theatre Before the Show (Photo: SnaagMagazine)
On a Saturday night in Paris, the streets hum with possibility—wine-fueled dinner parties, thumping club basements, and sleek hotel bars filled with after-midnight mischief. But tucked away just off Avenue George V, behind velvet curtains and the perfect shade of Parisian red, is a different kind of spectacle: the unapologetic, high-gloss, art-directed tease of Le Crazy Horse de Paris.
So the question begs—are nude cabarets still a thing?
In a post-#MeToo world, where consent, gaze, and power are rightly being reexamined, you might assume the answer is no. That the era of the "girl show" is best left to black-and-white postcards and a dusty drawer of Parisian nostalgia. But Crazy Horse isn’t some relic of the past—it’s a glossy, glittering, and often deeply conceptual performance art house where nudity doesn’t feel exploitative. It feels... transcendent. Even subversive.
“It’s not a strip club. It’s a fever dream—equal parts Bauhaus and Beyoncé.”
Totally Crazy Show at the Crazy Horse in Paris (Photo: SnaagMagazine)
Founded in 1951 by Alain Bernardin, Le Crazy has always pushed the idea that eroticism can be elevated to high art. Dancers are selected with the precision of couture casting: same height, same proportions, same jawline almost. But within that uniformity lies the genius—it's not about objectification, it's about the canvas. Their bodies become living works, molded by light, shadow, and choreography that blurs the line between movement and optical illusion.
It’s not a strip club. It’s a fever dream—equal parts Bauhaus and Beyoncé.
A Modern Take on Sensuality
In a time when sexuality is being reclaimed in all its complexity, Crazy Horse has stayed relevant by leaning into the aesthetic. The lighting design alone is worth the ticket price. It's a masterclass in seduction—not through exposure, but through concealment. A shoulder revealed in a flash of red. A thigh that vanishes and reappears in kaleidoscopic patterns. The body is fragmented, abstracted, multiplied. And it’s this dissonance—the tension between presence and illusion—that makes it feel less like voyeurism, and more like surrealist poetry.
While the performers are nude, they’re never naked in the traditional sense. Every number is choreographed down to the millimeter, and there’s no touching, no interaction, no leering. It’s polished, tongue-in-cheek, and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny. A recent act featured a cabaret cowboy lassoing herself into a corset of light. Another played with themes of technology and surveillance—a nude figure pixelated in motion like a walking glitch in the Matrix.
There’s power in the play.
So, Who’s in the Audience Now?
Everyone from bachelorette parties to fashion insiders to older couples who remember the show from decades past. And more and more, Gen Z creatives who are coming not for titillation, but for inspiration. “It felt like watching a moving editorial,” said one 23-year-old stylist after a recent visit. “Like L’Officiel meets performance art.”
And there’s something to be said for that: in an age of OnlyFans and algorithm-fed nudes, the Crazy experience feels strangely... analog. Ritualistic. Intimate. It’s not just about seeing skin; it’s about sitting in the dark with strangers, letting your assumptions be rearranged, seduced, and maybe even questioned.
“It felt like watching a moving editorial. Like L’Officiel meets performance art”
Image of all the colorful wigs of the dancers at the Crazy Horse in Paris (Photo: SnaagMagazine)
A Cultural Touchstone Reimagined
At its best, Crazy Horse reminds us that sensuality doesn’t have to be crude, performative, or pandering. It can be intelligent. Beautiful. And even feminist—when the agency belongs to the performers, when the choreography is a love letter to the body, not a demand from it.
So, are nude cabarets still a thing?
In Paris, they never stopped being one. They just evolved into something cooler. And at Crazy Horse, they're very much still kicking—head high, limbs pointed, bathed in crimson, and lit like a dream.