Forty years ago, a friend suggested that Guy Lesquoy – who was at the time touring with a troupe of French dancers around the world – might like to travel to Macau. His response was immediately… “I don’t know where Macau is.” Today however, Macau is a place Guy feels very passionately about, and indeed the city he truly calls home.
“I am a citizen of the world,” he says proudly. “Born in Marseilles, grew up in Corsica and I live in Macau.”
In 1979, while he was performing at the famous Folies Bergère Music Hall in Paris, Guy made a life changing decision to bring The Crazy Paris show to Macau, an exotic and risqué aesthetic nude show, based on the renowned Crazy Horse Show, also based in Paris.
Months earlier, a young businessman from Macau had visited Paris looking for entertainment to bring back to the Portuguese colony, and he quickly decided on the Crazy Paris Show.
“I agreed to bring the show but I told him, ‘I’m very expensive’ and he said, ‘Price is not an issue’. I didn’t know who I was talking to!” laughs Guy.
In fact, he was talking to Stanley Ho, founder of STDM and owner of the then newly-built Hotel Lisboa. So his answer was of course, yes.
Originally, Guy came to Macau with his dance partner, Maite Alonso, performing a number choreographed by Jacques Fabre from Folies Bergère in Paris. Not surprisingly, the arrival of the Crazy Paris Show caused a bit of a stir in the small and rather conservative town, so Guy’s first job was to begin a charm offensive, which he did with great vigour.
“My grandfather had been the governor of Ivory Coast in Africa, and I had originally intended to be a diplomat and spoke seven languages, so that’s why I adapted so well,” he recalls.
In order to network and establish good relations, Guy joined the Club Militar and Tenis Civil, where he often played tennis with Stanley Ho. He became a member of the Rotary Club, and played bridge, handball and football – “where I learned my Cantonese”.
Always a keen sportsman, he went on to play first division soccer for 17 years.
“I found here the same way of life that we have in Corsica, very convivial,” says Guy. “I tried to respect everybody and I think that is why I was so well accepted in the whole community.”
“I think I did pretty well at the time, especially considering that I arrived in Macau with 20 of the most beautiful girls in the world!”
Another approach at winning over the local community was to present the show as something truly artistic, and to promote a respectable public image, not just of the show, but also the dancers.
“I was very strict with the girls because in public they were not only representing the show, but also France and our culture. Yes, the show was aesthetic nude, but outside no miniskirts, which allowed the people of Macau to more easily accept the show and view it positively,” he remembers.
After its first two month’s of operations, the show’s contract was extended for another three months, and then of course it remained to become one of the main attractions in the city.
“Everyone was coming to the show and bringing their friends, and the Macanese people were very interested in it,” says Guy.
The fact that Guy managed to have the show accepted so well in the city is perhaps even more remarkable when you consider its original location, in the Dom Pedro V Theatre.
“We were located right between St. Joseph’s seminary and the church. People were going out of the church and across the road into the show!” laughs Guy. “But Monsignor Teixeira was an extremely good friend to me.
There was some pushback initially from the Catholic church, but that’s where my diplomatic training came in.”
Guy recalls that every time they wanted to introduce a new dance to the show, it had to be presented to the Commission of Censorship for approval.
“There were three nuns and one priest on the commission,” says Guy with a grin, “and the people from the Tourism Department and the Government, but they were taken by the fact that it was an aesthetic nude show. What we were doing was showing the beauty of the human form in an extravagant way, with lighting and music and movement. It was suggestive, but we didn’t show anything explicitly.”
Later the show was moved to the Hotel Lisboa, where it remained for some 15 years, becoming a landmark entertainment event in the city, complete with beautiful dancers swimming around in a seven-ton aquarium. Guy ultimately left the show in 1992.
“I believe I should be in the Guinness Book of Records,” he says. “I did 12,000 can cans, every time doing five jump splits, so that’s 60,000 in total!”
Guy returned to France, but had trouble re-adjusting to life there, and soon realized that his heart and future were firmly in Macau. So together with his beloved dog Spot, he returned to begin a new chapter in his relationship with the city. He began by managing some high-end hair salons, then he worked as a PR for the Macau Government Tourist Office, and was also on the organizing team for the East Asian Games in 2005.
Then in 2006, another major entertainment phenomenon came to the city with the opening of The Venetian Macao, on the then-very empty Cotai Strip. Given his reputation and experience, Guy was a natural choice for a position on the senior management team for entertainment at Sands China Ltd.
“It was a very exciting time, starting everything, and developing the Streetmosphere entertainment. And then later we opened The Parisian as well”.
Guy remains working at The Venetian to this day, and just as he was at the beginning of his Macau journey, continues to be heavily involved in many activities and organisations in the city. He was influential in getting the Macau chapter of Alliance Francais started, and he is involved in the French-Macau Chamber of Commerce and the Macau-European Chamber of Commerce, often appearing as an emcee at their events. And through The Venetian and his membership in Rotary, he is always busy giving back to society.
“I do a lot of visits to elderly homes, planting trees, any kind of charity activity I can join,” he says.
And together with his wife of 17 years, Vicky, he remains very happily settled in the city, his home of four decades.
“I am the most Portuguese French guy who is proud to be seen as a Macau boy!”
