Creepy clowns, aerial acrobatics, tattooed dancers and a plethora of dwarves. After garnering wild, celebrity-endorsed success in London and Dubai, sexy, over-the-top members club Cirque le Soir is coming to Bund 22. Founder Ryan Bish and Brand Manager Sam Razaghi tell us why people are really, really into the little people…
So, why a circus-themed club?
Ryan Bish: I came up with the idea in my nightmares. When I was young, I was really scared of clowns and I thought one day I’m going to get my own back, and… just kidding. I was a party guy going out five to six times a week and started realizing people weren’t having fun until they got drunk cause everything was the same – flashing lights, decor, different DJs playing the same songs… So I thought, why not start the fun at the beginning of the night? I’m curious about the clowns.
Do you get people who’re scared of them?
RB: Terrified. Generally girls are terrified of clowns and Arab guys in Dubai are terrified of the snakes – strangely enough, a lot of girls have a thing for the midgets, so there’s quite a niche there.
Like, they think they’re really cute?
RB: No, a lot of our midgets get laid. So… they’re sexually active.
Is it ever weird to seek out midgets? Where do you find your talent?
RB: In London they’re actually quite rare to find, especially the ones who don’t get offended when you ask them, “Oh, would you like to work in the club – it’s like a circus theme and you dress up like a clown.”
So they’re a bit fetishized…
RB: Yeah, some of them don’t take to it well. But the younger ones, generally who have just finished studying, come and party and have fun. In Dubai, we had a real problem finding midgets pre-opening and no one wanted to come over from London. The day I arrived I got to the hotel and the valet was actually a dwarf. So we stole him and he knew a network in Dubai – so we recruited from there.
Sam Razaghi: The guy we found, his name was Ravi, great guy.
RB: He’s not a normal midget with a big forehead, this one’s like a little mini midget – by the way, you should say dwarf, midget is not cool.
SR: We changed his life.
RB: He’s a baller now.
SR: Seriously. It’s a fact that he makes more than anyone possibly in his family or in India if you think about it (laughs). But on the serious side, he’s getting married to a hot chick from his village, it was arranged.
RB: No, they met on Skype, so I think she got a shock when he turned up.
SR: He sees himself as an actor. And it’s a really cool thing to go from valet to star.
RB: Personally, some people might say I collect midgets… sorry, dwarves. We have a vast array of different kinds – we have a tiny Indian one, we have a rapping Iranian one, a gay one, a stripper, a little one that humps everything…
Great… Now, you guys get a lot of celebrities into your club. Care to name a few?
RB: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kanye West, Rihanna, Scarlett Johansson, P Diddy… we’ve had them all, apart from the Queen…
Have you sent her a personal invite?
RB: No, but we did a PR stunt for her coronation – again, I keep reverting back to dwarfism, but we sent dwarves dressed up as the Queen and her husband to the palace to promote our new website… wait, to promote something… I can’t remember. We’re just press whores basically.
Do you have any good stories about celebs?
RB: There are a few that don’t like the dwarves. Rihanna loved the snake.
SR: The main singer of the Pussycat Dolls was there the night we had the midget dressed up like the Queen. She would not let him go, like literally followed him around. RB: Actually, [Ravi] needs security because people have tried to steal him. He’s that small.
SR: This is weird, but you’d be surprised how many times a night I have to say, “I think we lost our midget.”
RB: True story.
SR: People pick him up and put him down in a crowd of people and he has to find his way back up to the stage. So we’ve given him a laser that he points to the ceiling. People watch out for him now though.
You opened in Dubai before Shanghai. What were some of the challenges breaking into that market?
RB: Adapting the concept. Dubai is very conservative. There are a lot of performances in London– like the burlesque– that we couldn’t bring to Dubai because you can’t show any flesh or insinuate anything to do with sex.
SR: Dubai brought a little more of a theatrical piece to the game because interaction with the performers is not really allowed. We slowly turned it into more organized chaos on stage.
RB: When we were opening, the market didn’t really understand and thought we were actually a circus – we had people ringing up asking what time the show started and could they have five kids’ tickets.
Did anyone ever try to bring kids in?
RB: Yeah, we thought they were bringing in new midgets for auditions.
This is quite a specific type of nightlife. How do you try to keep people coming back?
RB: I always bring that up in London – we have two people dedicated to sourcing new talent and always make sure that if you go one night, you’ll never have the same act. In London, we’re spoiled because we have a huge array of wild, wonderful performers, but Dubai was a bit more testing because you don’t have those freak show performances, so we had to import and train a lot more.
SR: We can’t change the performance because of the licensing, so we change the costumes a lot.
Who makes your costumes?
RB: That’s a secret. We have an in-house seamstress that we imported from another weird country that I can’t tell you.
As you’re training the staff here in Shanghai, how do you explain the concept to them?
SR: That’s our biggest challenge actually, because staff must be involved in the performance. That’s one of the things Ryan is really adamant about. Everyone in the club is part of the experience: from costumes to champagne shows, everything must be orchestrated.
And does that just come down to them having a great personality and being part of the fun?
RB: It’s difficult to try and come up with a whole workforce that all has amazing personalities. We need a mixture of that and cool costumes and a good attitude… I think we should be the lead story in your magazine. What will it take for us to be a lead story?
Ryan Bish (left) and Sam Razaghi (photo by Nicky Almasy)
Juicy bits...
RB: All right. Well, we have big plans for giving the Chinese market a slice of the craziness and piece of the Dubai action. We’re also going to draw on all of our celebrity contacts we’ve developed over the years, and we plan on bringing artists and singers who have never been here before. In London, generally all of our competitors will pay celebrities US$20-50,000 to turn up for a drink. We’ve never done that. A lot of times, we make sure these people have such a good time – we shower them with champagne and fun – that they get on the mike and give us a free show… which is fun, ‘cause it’s free.
What’s the most someone has spent at your club in one go?
RB: GBP148,000. The main spenders at our place are either UAE oil money or poker players– they spend money like it grows on trees. We have bottles of champagne that go for up to GPB120,000 pounds [Ed – if you’re curious, it’s a gold-plated 30-liter bottle of Ace of Spades ‘Midas’ champagne]. Basically, if you spend over a certain amount of money, we’ll give you a dedicated show, send performers to your table with the bottles and we say your name on the mike. So basically it’s… I don’t want to say feeding people’s egos – but that’s what it is.
You’ll have the same thing in Shanghai?
RB: Yes, you could say we’re adopting the same business model.
Any other funny stories you’d like to share?
RB: We’ve got loads of funny stories – in London we’ve got a giant who is 7 foot 1 and a dwarf who’s… a dwarf… and they’ve become best friends. The giant is very reclusive and introverted and the dwarf is outgoing and crazy – they formed a nice bromance. They used to share tips, leave at four in the morning, get drunk and go to the whorehouses together. The midget used to joke about how the giant comes really quickly.
Were you really afraid of clowns as a kid?
RB: No, I used to beat them up.
// Cirque Le Soir will be opening in early September - see listing here!
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