Dancer at the Crazy Horse, Bamby Splish-Splash reveals the woman behind the Crazy girl

The Crazy Horse honors its Crazy girls: from April 1 to 30, the dancers (there are a dozen of them on stage each evening) take the floor at the end of each show to unveil the woman behind the artist. Bamby Splish-Splash, Tina Tobago, Lola Kasmir, Hippy Bang-Bang, Pixelle Canon, Kika Revolver, Prima Analytic, Coco Vanille… discover the women who hide behind these fanciful names and these rainbow wigs.

"If the dancers look alike at times on stage thanks to the tricks of the show, in life they are all different. They come from different countries, different cultures. They are complex and uninhibited, free and multi-faceted. This are strong women who can have weaknesses, choose to show them or not. Like us, in short", underlines Andrée Deissenberg, Managing Director Creation & Crazy Horse brands.

Every day in April, the Crazy Horse website and social networks reveal the portrait of a Crazy girl. She reveals her story, her passions, her challenges, her personality. In the evening, this dancer is honored in the solos of the show Totally Crazy and when the curtain falls, she returns to the stage to meet the public for a question and answer session.

Meet one of them, Bamby Splish-Splash.

Franceinfo Culture: How long have you been at Crazy Horse Paris? How did you get into it?

Bamby Splish-Splash: It's been seven years. I had dreamed of going to the Crazy Horse for a while. When I was a student in Nice, a friend, who also dreamed of this cabaret, showed me videos. I started to take a passion for the history of the place, the choreographies, the costumes, and to tell myself that this would be my base. I wanted more than anything to come back here, but I waited until I was 19. I was afraid at 18 to audition, I was very afraid of a refusal. I sent my application on January 1, 2015, telling myself it's the first day of the year, it's symbolic. On January 2, an announcement appeared on Facebook indicating that the Crazy Horse was organizing an audition in Marseille, in my hometown, on January 13. For me, it was a sign of fate. I applied.

But I didn't have the experience of the Crazy scene before really being there: there it was in a small studio with very strong lighting in front of two juries. That's not the experience girls have when they audition in Paris. I knew the next day, January 14, that I was taken. I was then doing a partial Art History for my Performing Arts-Dance degree in Nice when I received a phone call from Crazy telling me that I was going to Seoul for a year for an international tour.

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What is the origin of your stage name? Who gives it to you? Can we refuse it?
Bamby was obvious for several reasons. First for my young age when I joined the troupe, then for my doe eyes, and finally for the Disney fawn whose gentle character and determination I share. The artistic direction likened me to this character who jumps in large puddles, hence the Splish-Splash.

The choice of name is normally very formal: on the day of the Crazy Girl premiere, management christens her with a stage name just before the curtain opens for the show. We have the right to refuse it once but if the second name does not please us, we must however keep it.

What story do you have with dance?

I have a rather special story and a very unconventional background because I didn't follow a classical dance background. I did what I could: if I went to the summer camp, I took the dance workshop. I was passionate about Bollywood films whose choreographies I reproduced and I loved doing shows when my parents organized parties at home.

I took a literary baccalaureate with a dance option, which allowed me to learn a little more about dance, but it was frustrating because we had a lot of theory on the history of dance, but the practice didn't wasn't elaborate enough to give me a real basis for classical dance. When I was 18, when I left to do my university studies in Nice, I had the opportunity to be linked to the Rosella Hightower dance school in Mougins, which is a school for professionals. We had amateur access: for a year, with two lessons a week, classical and jazz, I got into it.

Going to Crazy gave me a good foundation. When we arrived, we were told: you have your gestural baggage, you are going to use it but we are going - like a rough stone - to carve you Crazy. It was also lucky for me because I was less dependent on classical choreographic language than my classmates: I could easily mold myself to this Crazy vocabulary. Here we have a code, a very specific language. Sometimes it's very hard for girls who come from classics, because you really have to learn to deconstruct this body which for so many years was forbidden to arch, for example. Here we arch! It depends on the availability that each girl has in her body: dancing requires intelligence, observation and adaptation.

Do you have to have acting skills to move from one character to another in the different scenes?

Definitely yes. I think that's my main asset given that I didn't have this classical dance base. You have to be able to put yourself in the color of a character, to get the emotions. I have a lot of vignette solos (note: very short, very fast solos that come up twice in the show) which are very rich. For example, for the Miss Astra, Miss Bisou, Lolita numbers, there is the choreography but sometimes the interaction with the public. The duets are also very rewarding. Solo, duo, group, each number is different, something is happening, it's alive, you communicate with your audience or with the girls.

How long does a career last?

It's very different. There currently, we have a daughter who has fifteen years of house. It's also a question: how to approach the break with the stage, this intimate space, of love, meaningful for the artist. It's very hard to say goodbye to the scene and even more to that of the Crazy when you're passionate and you've dreamed of being here. There is a very distressing side and very hard to manage... for the aftermath, you really have to be ready, to have something behind to say to yourself: I am leaving an adventure for another equally beautiful adventure!

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If you hadn't been a dancer, what profession would you have chosen?

I think I would have liked to be in the artistic, artistic, manual, creative professions, perhaps a costume designer because I really like period costumes like the Empire, the Regency.

You have an Instagram account and a YouTube channel where we discover your passion for Do It Yourself

I really like things related to Do It Yourself. I hunt a lot at flea markets and I love second-hand fashion: it allows me to have unique pieces, to see pieces that have potential but that I would have seen differently. There, I can transform them, it's the creative side that I love in the second hand. I'm still looking for myself, it's something I did alone at home and I'm starting to present it a bit with my YouTube channel, to share it with people who follow me on my Instagram account bamby.fr.

I never stopped doing that. I was always attracted: when I was young, I had a nanny who had a glue gun and I said that when I was older I would have one! I always wanted to help her, it fascinated me, I was manual, I created doll dresses...

A post shared by Ornella | ⵣ (@bamby.fr)

Do you think you will develop this passion tomorrow when you have turned the page on cabaret?

I think that for a long time it was always present in my life but it was not obvious: I did not tell myself that it was my means of expression, that it was something that made me vibrate daily, it was rather off. Now I'm beginning to understand that it's part of my life, feeds me, helps me refocus, rejuvenate. This is one of the quiet times of my day. I think it's my way, it's my way. Maybe there's something to do with it after Crazy Horse? I don't know !

Maybe I'll open a store, I'll be a crocheter, I'll create workshops, I'll help young girls to start sewing... I try to listen to my instincts, I trust the life. For the moment, I like to do it, to share it with the people who follow me; at the same time, it's rewarding because I feel it inspires other people. It's a way to communicate in another way through another art, another media. It's a communication, which is virtual, digital, but just as interesting as here at the Crazy Horse where with the Crazy girl Lola Kashmir, I crochet swimsuits.

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Ornella by day, Bamby by night: do they have things in common?

Bamby and Ornella should not be seen as two different entities. I think that Bamby is an added value of Ornella: Bamby enriches Ornella and gives it more confidence.