cabaret

n.

1. A restaurant or nightclub providing short programs of live entertainment.
2. The floor show presented by such a restaurant or nightclub.

[French, tap-room, from Middle Dutch cabret, from Old North French camberette, from Late Latin camera, room. See chamber.]

For more information on cabaret, visit Britannica.com.

Cabaret came late to Russia, but once the French, German, and Swiss culture spread eastward in the first decade of the twentieth century, a uniquely Russian form took root, later influencing European cabarets. While Russian theater is internationally renowned - as just the names Chekhov and Stanislavsky confirm - the theatrical presentations in cabarets are less so, despite the brilliance of the poets and performers involved.

The French word cabaret originally meant two things: a plebeian pub or wine-house, and a type of tray that held a variety of different foods or drinks. By its generic meaning a cabaret is an intimate night spot where audiences enjoy alcoholic drinks while listening to singers and stand-up comics. While sophisticates quibble over precise definitions, most will agree on the cabaret's essential elements. A cabaret is performed usually in a small room where the audience sits around small tables, and where stars and tyros alike face no restrictions on the type of music or genre or combinations thereof, can experiment with avant-garde material never before performed, and can "personally" interact with the audience. The cabaret removes the "fourth wall" between artist and audience, thus heightening the synergy between the two. Rodolphe Salis - a failed artist turned tavern keeper - established the first cabaret artistique called Le Chat Noir (The Black Cat) in Paris, where writers, artists, and composers could entertain each other with their latest poems and songs in a Montmartre pub.

Cabarets soon mushroomed across Europe, its Swiss and Austrian varieties influencing Russian artists directly. Russian emigrés performed, for example, in balalaika bands at the Café Voltaire, founded by Hugo Ball in 1916 in Zürich, Switzerland. The influence of Vienna-based cabarets such as Die Fledermaus (The Bat) is reflected in the name of the first Russia cabaret: "Bat."

This tiny theater was opened on February 29, 1908, by Nikita Baliev, an actor with the Moscow Art Theater (MKhAT) in tune with the prevailing mood in Russia. In the years following the revolution of 1905, Russian intellectual life shifted from the insulated world of the salon to the zesty world of the cabaret, the balagan (show), and the circus. New political and social concerns compelled the theater to bring art to the masses. Operating perhaps as the alter ego - or, in Freudian terms, the id - of MkhAT, the "Bat" served as a night spot for actors to unwind after performances, mocking the seriousness of Stanislavsky's method. This cabaret originated from the traditional "cabbage parties" (kapustniki) preceding Lent (which in imperial Russia involved a period of forced abstinence both from theatrical diversion as well as voluntary abstinence from meat). Housed in a cellar near Red Square, the "Bat" had by 1915 become the focal point of Moscow night life and remained so until its closure in 1919.

While the format of the Russian cabaret - a confined stage in a small restaurant providing amusement through variety sequences - owed much to Western models, the uniqueness of the shows can be attributed to the individuality of Nikita Baliev and indigenous Russian folk culture. In one show entitled Life's Metamorphoses, Baliev installed red lamps under the tables that blinked in time with the music. In another show, he asked everyone to sing "Akh, akh, ekh, im!" - to impersonate someone sneezing. As Teffi (pseudonym of Nadezhda Buchinskaya), a composer for the "Bat" recalled, "Everything was the invention of one man - Nikita Baliev. He asserted his individuality so totally that assistants would only hinder him. He was a real sorcerer."

The Russian cabaret also flourished due to its links with the conventions of the indigenous folk theater - the balagan, the skomorokhi (traveling buffoons), and the narodnoye gulyanie (popular promenading). It incorporated the folk theater's elements - clowning, quick repartee, the plyaska (Russian dance), and brisk sequence of numbers. Baliev employed key writers and producers, including Leonid Andreyev, Andrei Bely, Valery Bryusov, Sergei Gorodetsky, Alexei Tolstoy, Vasily Luzhsky, Vsevolod Meyerkhold, Ivan Moskvin, Boris Sadovskoi, and Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik. Famous artists performed at the "Bat," including Fyodor Chalyapin, Leonid Sobinov, and Konstantin Stanislavsky. In 1916 - 1918 Kasian Goleizovsky, the great Constructivist balletmaster of the 1920s, directed performances.

Like most visionaries ahead of their time in the Soviet Union, however, Baliev was arrested. When released in 1919 after five days of confinement, he fled to Paris with the renamed Chauve-Souris ("bat" in French), which toured Europe and the United States extensively. In 1922 the Baliev Company moved to New York, where Baliev entertained enthusiastic audiences until his death in 1936. Baliev and the "Bat" inspired many imitations, most notably the "Blue Bird" (Der Blaue Vogel), founded in Berlin by the actor Yasha Yuzhny in 1920.

Bibliography

Jelavich, Peter. (1993). Berlin Cabaret. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lareau, Alan. (1995). The Wild Stage: Literary Cabarets of the Weimar Republic. Rochester, NY: Camden House.

Russell, Robert, and Barratt, Andrew. (1990). Russian Theatre in the Age of Modernism. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Segel, Harold. (1987). Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret: Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Cracow, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Zurich. New York: Columbia University Press.

Segel, Harold. (1993). The Vienna Coffeehouse Wits, 1890 - 1938. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.

Senelick, Lawrence. (1993). Cabaret Performance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.

—JOHANNA GRANVILLE

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - cabaret

idioms:

• cabaret artiste    cabaretkunstner

Nederlands (Dutch)
cabaret

Français (French)
n. - cabaret, spectacle de cabaret, (restaurant) cabaret

idioms:

• cabaret artiste    artiste de cabaret, fantaisiste

Deutsch (German)
n. - Cabaret, Kabarett

idioms:

• cabaret artiste    Kabarettist

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - πρόγραμμα πίστας νυκτερινού κέντρου, καμπαρέ, νυκτερινό κέντρο με πρόγραμμα πίστας

idioms:

• cabaret artiste    αρτίστα του καμπαρέ, καμπαρετζού

Italiano (Italian)
cabaret

Português (Portuguese)
n. - cabaré (m), espetáculo (m) de cabaré

Русский (Russian)
кабаре

Español (Spanish)
n. - cabaret, espectáculo

idioms:

• cabaret artiste    cabaretista, artista de cabaret

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - kabaré

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
酒店, 酒店的歌舞表演

idioms:

• cabaret artiste    酒店歌舞表演技艺家

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 酒店, 酒店的歌舞表演

idioms:

• cabaret artiste    酒店歌舞表演技藝家

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 카바레

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - キャバレー, ショー

idioms:

• cabaret artiste    キャバレー芸人

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) ملهى ليلي, عرض في نادي ليلي‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮מועדון-לילה, קברט‬

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