Cabaret Quotes

In the cabaret of globalization, the state shows itself as a table dancer that strips off everything until it is left with only the minimum indispensable garments: the repressive force.

Can you pass me the slutty one, please?” I handed her the bottle of bright-red nail polish. “I think it’s actually called Crimson Cabaret,” I said. “Don’t be a slut-shamer.

Every word that is spoken and sung here (the Cabaret Voltaire) represents at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect.

There was a cabaret, and there was a master of ceremonies... and there was a city called Berlin, in a country called Germany...and it was the end of the world.

As touchy as cabaret performers and as stubborn as factory machinists....

He'd actually done it! He leaned back into the microphone and whispered to the now silent cave: 'Come to the Cabaret!

I don’t think this kind of thing [satire] has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It’s not even preaching to the converted; it’s titillating the converted. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, ‘We need satire of them, not of us.’ I’m fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the ’30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War.

Although they are often called cabarets, and occasionally there is even strip-dancing involved, you shouldn't associate them with merrymaking or extravaganza...

This isn't my last brush with catastrophe while making Destination Truth. Rather, it's merely the opening act in a cabaret of close calls, all in the name of exploration. I'm not saying that making D.T. is dangerous; it's not, per se. It's just that when you go out of your way to find adventure, sometimes adventure bites you on the ass. The key is figuring out how to walk away in one piece.

I'm happy to see you so well-settled here. Now you must make an effort, you must become somebody. I don't care what you do later, only try to be the best. Even if you become a cabaret dance, better that you dance at the lido than in a hole in the wall.

It's nice to watch television but it's even nicer when you've got a drink in your hand,' Gregory Ratcliffe, a Birmingham shopkeeper, told Reynolds News. 'Makes it more intimate somehow. Gives you the feeling that you're in a posh cabaret.

Sometimes, when I was sitting in the Crimson Cabaret on a rainy night, I thought of myself as occupying a waiting room for the abyss (which of course was exactly what I was doing) and between sips from my glass of wine or cup of coffee I smiled sadly and touched the front pocket of my coat where I kept my imaginary ticket to oblivion.

This is astounding, amazing, so incredibly thrilling. Only today a world travelling cabaret performing drag queen took me out for lunch and named me as his new best friend. The idea plunges my black and white world into a vibrant techni-colour rainbow.

If life is a cabaret, I must be in-between performances.

That air of electric tension, of a great city on the edge of an abyss, is more noticeable than ever at the White Russian cabaret called, not inappropriately, "New York." You wouldn't know you were in China. An almond-eyed platinum-blonde has just finished wailing, with a Mott Street accent, "You're gonna lose your gal." ("Jane Brown's Body")

I lived like a man who wanted to die but who had no courage to do it himself. I walked black streets and alleys alone; I passed out in cabarets. I backed out of two duels more from apathy than cowardice and truly wished to be murdered. And then I was attacked. It might have been anyone-and my invitation was open to sailors, thieves, maniacs, anyone. But it was a vampire. He caught me lust a few steps from my door one night and left me for dead, or so I thought.

التاريخ السياسي قد علمنا أن السياسة كباريه وأنه في الكباريه لابد أن تجد بنات الليل رجلا يحميهن .. يسمونه البلطجي .. والدول العظمى تقوم بهذا الدور عادة

I used to ask myself, ‘Sergei, would you rather spend your money on drink or women?’ and thanks to the club, I spend it on both and am called a patron of the arts.

Berlin. I used to love this old city. But that was before it had caught sight of its own reflection and taken to wearing corsets laced so tight that it could hardly breathe. I loved the easy, carefree philosophies, the cheap jazz, the vulgar cabarets and all of the other cultural excesses that characterized the Weimar years and made Berlin seem like one of the most exciting cities in the world.

Were it not for the cabarets, would not the Government be overturned every Tuesday? Happily, by Tuesday, this people is glutted, sleeps off its pleasure, is penniless, and returns to its labor, to dry bread, stimulated by a need of material procreation, which has become a habit to it. None

Do l shock you, darling?

Life is just one damned thing after another: And death is a cabaret.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has several times made statements to the effect that we Europeans should not cultivate a superficial anti-Americanism. But mine isn't superficial at all. Personally I have nothing against the US itself - it's a beautiful country - it's the people who live there that are the problem. I guess you could say it's the same thing with Bavaria.

Outside the walls of the Crimson Cabaret was a world of rain and darkness. At intervals, whenever someone entered or exited through the front door of the club, one could actually see the steady rain and was allowed a brief glimpse of the darkness. Inside it was all amber light, tobacco smoke, and the sound of the raindrops hitting the windows, which were all painted black. On such nights, as I sat at one of the tables in that drab little place, I was always filled with an infernal merriment, as if I were waiting out the apocalypse and could not care less about it. I also liked to imagine that I was in the cabin of an old ship during a really vicious storm at sea or in the club car of a luxury passenger train that was being rocked on its rails by ferocious winds and hammered by a demonic rain. Sometimes, when I was sitting in the Crimson Cabaret on a rainy night, I thought of myself as occupying a waiting room for the abyss (which of course was exactly what I was doing) and between sips from my glass of wine or cup of coffee I smiled sadly and touched the front pocket of my coat where I kept my imaginary ticket to oblivion.

The Staging In the weeks after my mother's death, I sleep Four or five hours a night, often interrupted By dreams, and take two or three naps a day. It seems like enough. I can survive if I keep This sleep schedule as it has been constructed For me. But if it seems my reflexes are delayed, Or if I sway when I walk, or weep or do not weep, Please don't worry. I'm not under destruction. My grief has cast me in a lethargic cabaret. So pay the cover charge and take your seat. This mourning has become a relentless production And I've got seventy-eight roles to play.

Et que faudrait-il faire ? Chercher un protecteur puissant, prendre un patron, Et comme un lierre obscur qui circonvient un tronc Et s'en fait un tuteur en lui léchant l'écorce, Grimper par ruse au lieu de s'élever par force ? Non, merci ! Dédier, comme tous ils le font, Des vers aux financiers ? se changer en bouffon Dans l'espoir vil de voir, aux lèvres d'un ministre, Naître un sourire, enfin, qui ne soit pas sinistre ? Non, merci ! Déjeuner, chaque jour, d'un crapaud ? Avoir un ventre usé par la marche ? une peau Qui plus vite, à l'endroit des genoux, devient sale ? Exécuter des tours de souplesse dorsale ?... Non, merci ! D'une main flatter la chèvre au cou Cependant que, de l'autre, on arrose le chou, Et donneur de séné par désir de rhubarbe, Avoir son encensoir, toujours, dans quelque barbe ? Non, merci ! Se pousser de giron en giron, Devenir un petit grand homme dans un rond, Et naviguer, avec des madrigaux pour rames, Et dans ses voiles des soupirs de vieilles dames ? Non, merci ! Chez le bon éditeur de Sercy Faire éditer ses vers en payant ? Non, merci ! S'aller faire nommer pape par les conciles Que dans des cabarets tiennent des imbéciles ? Non, merci ! Travailler à se construire un nom Sur un sonnet, au lieu d'en faire d'autres ? Non, Merci ! Ne découvrir du talent qu'aux mazettes ? Être terrorisé par de vagues gazettes, Et se dire sans cesse : "Oh ! pourvu que je sois Dans les petits papiers du Mercure François" ?... Non, merci ! Calculer, avoir peur, être blême, Préférer faire une visite qu'un poème, Rédiger des placets, se faire présenter ? Non, merci ! non, merci ! non, merci ! Mais... chanter, Rêver, rire, passer, être seul, être libre, Avoir l'œil qui regarde bien, la voix qui vibre, Mettre, quand il vous plaît, son feutre de travers, Pour un oui, pour un non, se battre, - ou faire un vers ! Travailler sans souci de gloire ou de fortune, À tel voyage, auquel on pense, dans la lune ! N'écrire jamais rien qui de soi ne sortît, Et modeste d'ailleurs, se dire : mon petit, Sois satisfait des fleurs, des fruits, même des feuilles, Si c'est dans ton jardin à toi que tu les cueilles ! Puis, s'il advient d'un peu triompher, par hasard, Ne pas être obligé d'en rien rendre à César, Vis-à-vis de soi-même en garder le mérite, Bref, dédaignant d'être le lierre parasite, Lors même qu'on n'est pas le chêne ou le tilleul, Ne pas monter bien haut, peut-être, mais tout seul !

Sometimes it is the other way around. A white person is set down in our midst, but the contrast is just as sharp for me. For instance, when I sit in the drafty basement that is The New World Cabaret with a white person, my color comes. We enter chatting about any little nothing that we have in common and are seated by the jazz waiters. In the abrupt way that jazz orchestras have, this one plunges into a number. It loses no time in circumlocutions, but gets right down to business. It constricts the thorax and splits the heart with its tempo and narcotic harmonies. This orchestra grows rambunctious, rears on its hind legs and attacks the tonal veil with primitive fury, rending it, clawing it until it breaks through to the jungle beyond. I follow those heathen--follow them exultingly. I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai above my head, I hurl it true to the mark yeeeeooww! I am in the jungle and living in the jungle way. My face is painted red and yellow and my body is painted blue. My pulse is throbbing like a war drum. I want to slaughter something--give pain, give death to what, I do not know. But the piece ends. The men of the orchestra wipe their lips and rest their fingers. I creep back slowly to the veneer we call civilization with the last tone and find the white friend sitting motionless in his seat, smoking calmly. "Good music they have here," he remarks, drumming the table with his fingertips. Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what I felt. He is far away and I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us. He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored.

Musical intelligence. Agent attends a concert and receives his instructions. Information and directives in and out through street singers, musical broadcasts, jukeboxes, records, high school bands, whistling boys, cabaret performers, singing waiters, transistor radios.

Were it not for the cabarets, would not the Government be overturned every Tuesday? Happily, by Tuesday, this people is glutted, sleeps off its pleasure, is penniless, and returns to its labor, to dry bread, stimulated by a need of material procreation, which has become a habit to it.

We go in and sit on the sofa by the fire to dry out, and she plays her favourite records, lots of Rickie Lee Jones and Led Zeppelin and Donovan and Bob Dylan - even though she was sixteen in 1982, there's definitely something very 1971 about Alice. I watch as she jumps around the room to 'Crosstown Traffic' by Jimi Hendrix, then when she's out of breath and tired of changing records every three minutes she puts a crackly old Ella Fitzgerald LP on, and we lie on the sofa and read our books, and steal glances at each other every now and then, like that bit between Michael York and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, and talk only when we feel like it.

Once a wily and wicked person, perceiving her helplessness, offered her a position as dish-washer in a fashionable and depraved cabaret; but our heroine was true to her rustic ideals and refused to work in such a gilded and glittering palace of frivolity—especially since she was offered only $3.00 per week with meals but no board.

All the odds are in my favor Something’s bound to begin It's got to happen, happen sometime Maybe this time I’ll win

The future belongs to those who dare—but also to those who don’t check their mailboxes too often.

You can shovel your awards into the place closest to your brain.

The city seemed untroubled by the war. Broadway—“the Great White Way,” so dubbed for its bright electric lighting—came brilliantly alight and alive each night, as always, although now with unexpected competition. A number of restaurants had begun providing lavish entertainment along with meals, even though they lacked theater licenses. The city was threatening a crackdown on these maverick “cabarets.

Were it not for the cabarets, would not the Government be overturned every Tuesday? Happily, by Tuesday, this people is glutted, sleeps off its pleasure, is penniless, and returns to its labor, to dry bread, stimulated by a need of material procreation, which has become a habit to it. None the less, this people has its phenomenal virtues, its complete men, unknown Napoleons, who are the type of its strength carried to its highest expression, and sum up its social capacity in an existence wherein thought and movement combine less to bring joy into it than to neutralize the action of sorrow.

The Lonely Astronomer I have slain the stars and hung them like heads of game on heaven's ceiling. The night has become my trophy room, slung with big cats and hippos, rhinos and buffalos and an exotic barasingha, a swampy cabaret star among the celestial jazz singers who, she claims, take liberties with the sacred lyrics and melodies of the spheres. Their eyes twinkle at me, their light ancient, folded in wrinkles of time like a black velvet purse. I wink back and smile. There is an intimate relationship between the suns and the rain, between the slayers and the slain. I run my fingers through their celestial skins, tracing their ley lines, and for a brief moment, linger in the tactile pleasures within.

Yo, discípulo de sempiterno candidato a la presidencia doctor Goyeneche, discípulo a su vez del sabio español Pero Grullo, tengo para Colombia y su infinidad de males una expedita solución: que dejen atracar. Los atracadores se irán a gastar el dinero de su atraco a un cabaret; el dueño del cabaret se comprará un carro; la fábrica de carros venderá más; y al vender más empleará más obreros; y al haber más obreros habrá menos desempleo; y al acabarse el desempleo se acabarán los atracadores y los secuestros y los robos y los asaltos, y sonreirá la gente, e irán todos a la universidad, y acaso a este servidor le den un puesto, aunque sea limpiador de oficinas, y al final del año habrá ahorrado con qué comprarse su alfombra persa, para poder volar.

The Weimar Republic gave nectar to the artists, social reformers and progressive people of all classes. They drank it, unaware that they were sitting close to a dungheap. The Nazi time had already begun in the first years of the Republic. Many, perhaps most, of those favoured by the new regime did not notice or did not want to see what was blatantly obvious. Pleasure had never been so sweet, the arts and architecture so advanced, the theatre so rich in new ideas and techniques. And the cabaret held up a mirror to the new times. Freedom from stereotyped convention produced original talents. In the “intimate theatres” and cabarets, elegant diseuses sang risque songs in a spirit of “anything goes”, titillating the senses of “normal” and homosexual people.

James wondered for a moment whether this was the first time someone had used a witchlight rune stone as stage lighting before his mind went blank. Christopher made a small noise in the back of his throat, and Thomas stared wide-eyed. The mermaid had human legs. They were long and really quite shapely, James had to admit, loosely draped in diaphanous skirts made of woven exotic seaweeds. Unfortunately, from the waist up she was the front half of a gaping, staring fish. Her scales were shiny metallic silver and reflected the light in a way that almost, but not quite, distracted from her dinner-plate-size, unblinking yellow eyes. The audience went mad, cheering and hooting twice as loudly as before. One of the werewolves howled, "CLARIBELLA!" in a mournful, yearning voice. "May I present," Matthew cried with a grin, "Claribella the Mermaid!" The crowd whistled and banged their approval. James, Christopher, and Thomas struggled to find words. "The mermaid's backwards," said James, having regained some of his vocabulary--though perhaps not all of it. "Matthew hired a reverse mermaid," Thomas agreed. "But why?" "I wonder what kind of fish she is," said Christopher. "Are mermaids a specific kind of fish? Sharks or herring, or such?" "I had kippers this morning," said Thomas sadly. The backward mermaid began to swing her hips side to side, with the ease of a practiced cabaret dancer. Her mouth bobbed open and closed in rhythm with the music. Her small fins, on either side of her body, flapped.

Almost immediately after jazz musicians arrived in Paris, they began to gather in two of the city’s most important creative neighborhoods: Montmartre and Montparnasse, respectively the Right and Left Bank haunts of artists, intellectuals, poets, and musicians since the late nineteenth century. Performing in these high-profile and popular entertainment districts could give an advantage to jazz musicians because Parisians and tourists already knew to go there when they wanted to spend a night out on the town. As hubs of artistic imagination and experimentation, Montmartre and Montparnasse therefore attracted the kinds of audiences that might appreciate the new and thrilling sounds of jazz. For many listeners, these locations leant the music something of their own exciting aura, and the early success of jazz in Paris probably had at least as much to do with musicians playing there as did other factors. In spite of their similarities, however, by the 1920s these neighborhoods were on two very different paths, each representing competing visions of what France could become after the war. And the reactions to jazz in each place became important markers of the difference between the two areas and visions. Montmartre was legendary as the late-nineteenth-century capital of “bohemian Paris,” where French artists had gathered and cabaret songs had filled the air. In its heyday, Montmartre was one of the centers of popular entertainment, and its artists prided themselves on flying in the face of respectable middle-class values. But by the 1920s, Montmartre represented an established artistic tradition, not the challenge to bourgeois life that it had been at the fin de siècle. Entertainment culture was rapidly changing both in substance and style in the postwar era, and a desire for new sounds, including foreign music and exotic art, was quickly replacing the love for the cabarets’ French chansons. Jazz was not entirely to blame for such changes, of course. Commercial pressures, especially the rapidly growing tourist trade, eroded the popularity of old Montmartre cabarets, which were not always able to compete with the newer music halls and dance halls. Yet jazz bore much of the criticism from those who saw the changes in Montmartre as the death of French popular entertainment. Montparnasse, on the other hand, was the face of a modern Paris. It was the international crossroads where an ever changing mixture of people celebrated, rather than lamented, cosmopolitanism and exoticism in all its forms, especially in jazz bands. These different attitudes within the entertainment districts and their institutions reflected the impact of the broader trends at work in Paris—the influx of foreign populations, for example, or the advent of cars and electricity on city streets as indicators of modern technology—and the possible consequences for French culture. Jazz was at the confluence of these trends, and it became a convenient symbol for the struggle they represented.

In the last years of the Republic there were films such as Robert Siodmark's Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday, 1930)) and Gerhard Lamprecht's Emil und die Detektive (Emil and the Detectives, 1931), which embraced the airy streets, light-dappled forests, and lakes surrounding Berlin. Billie Wilder, a brash young journalist and dance-hall enthusiast, worked on the scripts for both these films. While Kracauer and Eisner saw malevolence in the frequent trope of doubling (one being possessed by another and thus becoming two conflicting psychological presences), Wilder witnessed another form of doubling during the Weimer era: transvestitism, a staple of cabaret. Men dressing as women (as do Reinhold Schünzel in der Himmel auf Erden [Heaven on earth]) and Curti Bois in Der Fürst von Pappenheim [The Masked Mannequin][both 1927]) or women as men (as does Dolly Haas in Liebeskommando [Love's Command, 1931]), in order to either escape detection or get closer to the object of their affection, is an inherently comic situation, especially when much to his or her surprise the cross-dresser begins to enjoy the disguise. Billie left Germany before he directed a film of his own; as Billy he brought to Hollywood a vigorous appreciation of such absurdities of human behavior, along with the dry cynicism that distinguished Berlin humor and an enthusiasm for the syncopations of American jazz, a musical phenomenon welcomed in the German capital. Wilder, informed by his years in Berlin (to which he returned to make A Foreign Affair in 1948 and One, Two, Three in 1961), wrote and directed many dark and sophisticated American films, including The Apartment (1969) and Some Like it Hot (1959), a comedy, set during Prohibition, about the gender confusion on a tonal par with Schünzel's Viktor und Viktoria, released in December 1933, eleven months into the Third Reich and the last musical to reflect the insouciance of the late Republic.

The other evening, in that cafe-cabaret in the Rue de la Fontaine, where I had run aground with Tramsel and Jocard, who had taken me there to see that supposedly-fashionable singer... how could they fail to see that she was nothing but a corpse? Yes, beneath the sumptuous and heavy ballgown, which swaddled her and held her upright like a sentry-box of pink velvet trimmed and embroidered with gold - a coffin befitting the queen of Spain - there was a corpse! But the others, amused by her wan voice and her emaciated frame, found her quaint - more than that, quite 'droll'... Droll! that drab, soft and inconsistent epithet that everyone uses nowadays! The woman had, to be sure, a tiny carven head, and a kind of macabre prettiness within the furry heap of her opera-cloak. They studied her minutely, interested by the romance of her story: a petite bourgeoise thrown into the high life following the fad which had caught her up - and neither of them, nor anyone else besides in the whole of that room, had perceived what was immediately evident to my eyes. Placed flat on the white satin of her dress, the two hands of that singer were the two hands of a skeleton: two sets of knuckle-bones gloved in white suede. They might have been drawn by Albrecht Durer: the ten fingers of an evil dead woman, fitted at the ends of the two overlong and excessively thin arms of a mannequin... And while that room convulsed with laughter and thrilled with pleasure, greeting her buffoonery and her animal cries with a dolorous ovation, I became convinced that her hands no more belonged to her body than her body, with its excessively high shoulders, belonged to her head... The conviction filled me with such fear and sickness that I did not hear the singing of a living woman, but of some automaton pieced together from disparate odds and ends - or perhaps even worse, some dead woman hastily reconstructed from hospital remains: the macabre fantasy of some medical student, dreamed up on the benches of the lecture-hall... and that evening began, like some tale of Hoffmann, to turn into a vision of the lunatic asylum. Oh, how that Olympia of the concert-hall has hastened the progress of my malady!

The first signal of the change in her behavior was Prince Andrew’s stag night when the Princess of Wales and Sarah Ferguson dressed as policewomen in a vain attempt to gatecrash his party. Instead they drank champagne and orange juice at Annabel’s night club before returning to Buckingham Palace where they stopped Andrew’s car at the entrance as he returned home. Technically the impersonation of police officers is a criminal offence, a point not neglected by several censorious Members of Parliament. For a time this boisterous mood reigned supreme within the royal family. When the Duke and Duchess hosted a party at Windsor Castle as a thank you for everyone who had helped organize their wedding, it was Fergie who encouraged everyone to jump, fully clothed, into the swimming pool. There were numerous noisy dinner parties and a disco in the Waterloo Room at Windsor Castle at Christmas. Fergie even encouraged Diana to join her in an impromptu version of the can-can. This was but a rehearsal for their first public performance when the girls, accompanied by their husbands, flew to Klosters for a week-long skiing holiday. On the first day they lined up in front of the cameras for the traditional photo-call. For sheer absurdity this annual spectacle takes some beating as ninety assorted photographers laden with ladders and equipment scramble through the snow for positions. Diana and Sarah took this silliness at face value, staging a cabaret on ice as they indulged in a mock conflict, pushing and shoving each other until Prince Charles announced censoriously: “Come on, come on!” Until then Diana’s skittish sense of humour had only been seen in flashes, invariably clouded by a mask of blushes and wan silences. So it was a surprised group of photographers who chanced across the Princess in a Klosters café that same afternoon. She pointed to the outsize medal on her jacket, joking: “I have awarded it to myself for services to my country because no-one else will.” It was an aside which spoke volumes about her underlying self-doubt. The mood of frivolity continued with pillow fights in their chalet at Wolfgang although it would be wrong to characterize the mood on that holiday as a glorified schoolgirls’ outing. As one royal guest commented: “It was good fun within reason. You have to mind your p’s and q’s when royalty, particularly Prince Charles, is present. It is quite formal and can be rather a strain.

banquet oifert à un député par ses électeurs reconnaissants. La cheminée est ornée d’une pendule d’un goût atrocement troubadour, représentant le templier Bois-Guilbert enlevant une Rébecca dorée sur un cheval argenté. A droite et à gauche de cette odieuse horloge sont placés deux flambeaux de plaqué sous un globe. Ces magnificences sont l’objet de la secrète envie de plus d’une ménagère de Pont-de-Arche, et la servante elle-même ne les essuie qu’en tremblant. Je ne parle pas de quelques caniches en verre filé, d’un petit saint Jean en pâte de sucre, d’un Napoléon en chocolat, d’un cabaret chargé de porcelaines communes et pompeusement installé sur une table ronde, de gravures représentant les Adieux de Fontainebleau, Souvenirs et regrets, la Famille du marin, les Petits Braconniers et autres vulgarités du même genre. — Concevez-vous rien de pareil ? Je n’ai jamais su comprendre, pour ma part, cet amour du commun et du laid. Je conçois que tout le monde n’ait pas pour logement des Alhambras, des Louvres ou des Parthénons ; mais il est toujours si facile de ne pas avoir de pendule ! de laisser les murailles nues, et de se priver de lithographies de Maurin ou d’aquatintes de Jazet ! Les gens qui remplissaient ce salon me semblaient, à force de vulgarité, les plus étranges du monde ; ils avaient des façons de parler incroyables, et s’exprimaient en style fleuri, comme feu Prudhomme, élève de Brard et Saint-Omer. Leurs têtes, épanouies sur leurs cravates blanches, et leurs cols de chemise gigantesques faisaient penser à certains produits de la famille des cucurbitacés. Quelques hommes ressemblent à des animaux, au lion, au cheval, à l’âne ; ceux-ci, tout bien considéré, avaient l’air encore plus végétal que bestial. Des femmes, je n’en dirai rien, m’étant promis de ne jamais tourner en ridicule ce sexe charmant. Au milieu de ces légumes humains, Louise faisait l’effet d’une rose dans un carré de choux. Elle portait une simple robe blanche serrée à la taille par un ruban bleu ; ses cheveux, séparés en bandeaux, encadraient harmonieusement son front pur. Une grosse natte se tordait derrière sa nuque, couverte de cheveux follets et d’un duvet de pêche. Une quakeresse n’aurait rien trouvé à redire à cette mise, qui faisait paraître d’un grotesque et d’un ridicule achevés les harnais et les plumets de corbillard. des autres femmes ; il était impossible d’être de meilleur goût. J’avais peur que mon infante ne profitât de la circonstance pour déployer quelque toilette excessive et prétentieuse, achetée d’occasion. Cette pauvre robe de mousseline qui n’a jamais vu l’Inde, et qu’elle a probablement faite elle-même, m’a touché et séduit ; je ne tiens pas à la parure. J’ai eu pour maîtresse une gitana grenadine qui n’avait pour tout vêtement que des pantoufles bleues et un collier de grains d’ambre ; mais rien ne me contrarie comme un fourreau mal taillé et d’une couleur hostile. Les dandies bourgeois préférant de

In short, it was entirely natural that the newts stopped being a sensation, even though there were now as many as a hundred million of them; the public interest they had excited had been the interest of a novelty. They still appeared now and then in films (Sally and Andy, the Two Good Salamanders) and on the cabaret stage where singers endowed with an especially bad voice came on in the role of newts with rasping voices and atrocious grammar, but as soon as the newts had become a familiar and large-scale phenomenon the problems they presented, so to speak, were of a different character. (13) Although the great newt sensation quickly evaporated it was replaced with something that was somewhat more solid - the Newt Question. Not for the first time in the history of mankind, the most vigorous activist in the Newt Question was of course a woman. This was Mme. Louise Zimmermann, the manager of a guest house for girls in Lausanne, who, with exceptional and boundless energy, propagated this noble maxim around the world: Give the newts a proper education! She would tirelessly draw attention both to the newts' natural abilities and to the danger that might arise for human civilisation if the salamanders weren't carefully taught to reason and to understand morals, but it was long before she met with anything but incomprehension from the public. (14) "Just as the Roman culture disappeared under the onslaught of the barbarians our own educated civilisation will disappear if it is allowed to become no more than an island in a sea of beings that are spiritually enslaved, our noble ideals cannot be allowed to become dependent on them," she prophesied at six thousand three hundred and fifty seven lectures that she delivered at women's institutes all over Europe, America, Japan, China, Turkey and elsewhere. "If our culture is to survive there must be education for all. We cannot have any peace to enjoy the gifts of our civilisation nor the fruits of our culture while all around us there are millions and millions of wretched and inferior beings artificially held down in the state of animals. Just as the slogan of the nineteenth century was 'Freedom for Women', so the slogan of our own age must be 'GIVE THE NEWTS A PROPER EDUCATION!'" And on she went. Thanks to her eloquence and her incredible persistence, Mme. Louise Zimmermann mobilised women all round the world and gathered sufficient funds to enable her to found the First Newt Lyceum at Beaulieu (near Nice), where the tadpoles of salamanders working in Marseilles and Toulon were instructed in French language and literature, rhetoric, public behaviour, mathematics and cultural history. (15) The Girls' School for Newts in Menton was slightly less successful, as the staple courses in music, diet and cookery and fine handwork (which Mme. Zimmermann insisted on for primarily pedagogical reasons) met with a remarkable lack of enthusiasm, if not with a stubborn hostility among its young students. In contrast with this, though, the first public examinations for young newts was such an instant and startling success that they were quickly followed by the establishment of the Marine Polytechnic for Newts at Cannes and the Newts' University at Marseilles with the support of the society for the care and protection of animals; it was at this university that the first newt was awarded a doctorate of law.

Talis’s father has a karaoke machine in his basement, and he knows all the lyrics to “Like a Virgin” and “Holiday” as well as the lyrics to all the songs from Godspell and Cabaret. Talis’s mother is a licensed therapist who composes multiple-choice personality tests for women’s magazines. “Discover Which Television Character You Resemble Most.” Etc. Amy’s parents met in a commune in Ithaca: her name was Galadriel Moon Shuyler before her parents came to their senses and had it changed legally. Everyone is sworn to secrecy about this, which is ironic, considering that this is Amy.

Vincent set the pace in drinking: absinthe in the afternoon, wine with dinner, free beer at the cabaret, and his personal favorite, cognac, anytime. He used its sweet “stupefaction” to treat his inevitable winter depression, arguing that it “stimulated blood circulation”—increasingly important as the weather turned bitter cold. By the time he left Paris, he later admitted, he was well on the road to being a “drunkard” and an “alcoholic.

Manson attracted the attention of another woman, Patricia Krenwinkel, on Manhattan Beach in 1967. Krenwinkel later said that Manson was the first person who had ever told her she was beautiful and that she had sex with him on the first night they met. Thoroughly transfixed by Manson and desperate to become one of his girls, Krenwinkel left her job, car, apartment, and last paycheck behind and returned with the budding family to San Francisco. Krenwinkel gave Manson her father’s credit card and the foursome survived for a while by stealing and writing bad checks. Susan “Sadie” Atkins was the next woman to join the Manson Family. Atkins was an ex-convict who was supporting herself by topless dancing. Manson was drawn to Atkins when he learned that she had danced in a cabaret led by the self-styled leader of the Satanic Church, Anton LaVey. Atkins was a heavy drug-user when she met Manson and was easily convinced to join his family and to set about recruiting more members, preferably male. Atkins was able to lure Bruce Davis to join the family in the fall of 1967, the first male member and a man who was later described as Manson’s right-hand man. Davis met the family when they were in Oregon. Manson had traded his minibus for a full-size yellow school bus and had taken his family on a tour of the American West; he had decided the family should move to Los Angeles. The Haight had become too dangerous, Manson said, life would be better for the family in L.A. What he didn’t tell his family was that the real reason he wanted to move to Los Angeles was to pursue his dreams of stardom. Charles Manson was looking for a record deal.

Before we look at mechanisms it’s worth spending a bit of time thinking about what movement is.

La conversación tomó rumbos cosmopolitas: a ella lo que más le gustaba del mundo era Nueva York, porque no había indios, sólo negros.

You know, speaking from experience, I can tell you that there’s no aphrodisiac more potent than Watergate-themed cabaret music.

The Establishment Club was modelled on 'those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War'.

In order for me to get those moments that leave me filled with gratitude I have to be willing to first show up, and then show up again. Next step is making sure I’m the kind of friend I’m hoping for in the first place. It’s the reason I keep a pile of birthday, condolence and get-well cards sitting next to me. Lowers the excuses for sending out a note to celebrate or just let someone know they’re not alone. Meant a lot to me lately when people sent me cards after my sister, Diana died. Or the times I’ve carried a casserole to someone’s door, or had dinner delivered – on me. Or the times I’ve bought candles, or tea from a friend’s new company, or I’ve gone to see plays or cabaret performances, or bought CD’s or books, or countless other moments just like those. I wanted to encourage and celebrate, as well as sit alongside a friend who’s struggling with a loss or a challenge. It all starts with heading out my door and being open to whatever greets me along the way.

friend in London named Ben Walters wrote his PhD on cabaret and queer performance art. He told me that he thinks too many performers—Americans especially—confuse cabaret with musical revue. A musical revue, he said, is just a bunch of songs strung together with some anecdotes. But a cabaret needs to grow and change over the course of the evening. It needs to create a relationship with the audience and end in a different place from where it began. It needs to have a reason to exist

La Habana era una locura: yo creo que era la ciudad con más vida de todo el mundo. ¡Qué carajo París ni Nueva York! Demasiado frío... ¡Vida nocturna la de aquí! Verdad que había putas, había drogas y había mafia, pero la gente se divertía y la noche empezaba a las seis de la tarde y no se acababa nunca. ¿Te imaginas que en una misma noche podías tomarte una cerveza a las ocho oyendo a las Anacaonas en los Aires Libres del Prado, comer a las nueve con la música y las canciones de Bola de Nieve, luego sentarte en el Saint John a oír a Elena Burke, después irte a un cabaret a bailar con Benny Moré, con la Aragón, con la Casino de Playa, con la Sonora Matancera, descansar un rato vacilando los boleros de Olga Guillot, Vicentico Valdés, Ñico Membiela... o irte a oír a los muchachos del feeling, al ronco José Antonio Méndez, a César Portillo y, para cerrar la noche, a las dos de la mañana, escaparte a la playa de Marianao a ver el espectáculo del Chori tocando sus timbales, y tú ahí, como si nada, sentado entre Marlon Brando y Cab Calloway, al lado de Errol Flynn y de Josephine Baker. Y después, si todavía te quedaba aire, bajar a La Gruta, ahí en La Rampa, para amanecer metido en una descarga de jazz de Cachao con Tata Güines, Barreto, Bebo Valdés, el Negro Vivar, Frank Emilio y todos esos locos que son los mejores músicos que ha dado Cuba? Eran miles, la música estaba en la atmósfera, se podía cortar con un cuchillo, había que apartarla para poder pasar...

Éva n'a plus besoin de rien. Tout est fini. Cette coutume de fleurir les morts est injuste pour les fleurs que l'on décapite et abandonne sur la pierre froide d'un tombeau.

was; he’d never been

February 18: Marilyn takes Isidore Miller to dinner at the Club Gigi in the Fontainebleau Hotel. They also see a cabaret show at the Minaret.

Even under more ingratiating conditions than rocket travel, this new conquest has already disclosed drawbacks quite as remarkable as its advantages. On a transcontinental flight by a jet plane approaching super-sonic speed, the actual trip is so cramped, so dull, so vacuous, that the only attraction the air lines dare to offer are those vulgar experiences one can have by walking to the nearest cabaret, restaurant, or cinema: liquor, food, motion pictures, luscious stewardesses. Only a lurking sense of fear and the possibility of a grisly death help restore the sense of reality.

Una dama polaca, cuyo nombre no recuerdo, aunque sería Schnizweg o Wegschinz o algo parecido con muchas zetas y uves dobles, organizó un escándalo superior cierto día en la terraza del Casino, frente a la playa. La mujer, a voz en grito, amenazó con abandonar Biarritz si no se guardaban las mínimas garantías de decoro en la indumentaria de baño. Todo fue porque unas muchachas de París, que actuaban por la noche en un hotel, estaban en la playa ensayando sus bailes... sí, cierto, un tanto subidos de tono, y en bañador une-pièce... Pero tampoco era para tanto, me parece a mí.

La Belle Époque was a cabaret dance hall, much like the famous Moulin Rouge and Folies Bergere. We didn’t know that the evening's Beauty Pageant was a competition for The Lady Boy of Paris. The winner would proceed to compete at a flamboyant gala Lady Boy of the Year Award, held in Berlin on New Year's Eve.

There's horror, lust and ecstasy on stage at the White Mouse The Behrenstrasse's Babel, and Berlin's (second) wildest house! There's love and pain a-plenty dressed in shiny leather boots But whips and chains and naked hips are nothing when you see With your own eyes, This fantasy... Oh oh, those Berliner Girls They'll take you to another world.

Pentru unii era prea mult. Paul Nikolaus, artist de cabaret specializat în numere cu subiecte politice la faimosul club Kadeko din Berlin... s-a refugiat la Lucerna, unde s-a sinucis pe 20 martie 1933. ”Iată, nu mai glumesc”, a scris...

Mijn stijl is te vergelijken met dat van een essayist, vertelde me onlangs iemand. Mooi, maar ik zie het zelf iets simpeler. Ik doe een poging tot cabaret op papier.

Un payaso, una primera actriz de cabaret y un futbolista retirado se aprestan a tomar el control de las acciones: la escenografía del infierno se adapta sin problemas a un set de televisión.

Does it really matter as long as you're having fun?

Los Tangos del otro González Tuñón —Enrique— ya glosan en libro lo que hasta ese momento retumbaba apenas en los cabarets, arriba del sainete, o se iba prestigiando (como otros búmerans argentinos) en la localidad de París. Y la serie inaugural de 1926 no se detenía: Jacobo Fijman con su Molino rojo parecía anticipar ya fuera su manicomio artodiano como su mística desolada. Así como en1634 la vertiente más nítida de Boedo, Roberto Mariani1635 resolvía la contradicción lumínica central de su grupo escribiendo entre Claridad y Tinieblas. Y Yunque, por fin, asumía “la niñez desamparada” balanceándose en Barcos de papel que parecían ir boyando obstinadamente de la nostalgia a la pedagogía.

Patti. Come home. Come on. She’ll be straight with you.” (Basquiat spent most of his opening in a corner, arguing with his new girlfriend, Madonna, known for her performance at Haoui Montaug’s No Entiendes cabaret at Danceteria.) Yet the point of Ricard’s piece was

There were micro-squabbles almost unbelievable to imagine now. The BBC was giving live coverage to the Beaulieu Jazz Festival in 1961 and they had to actually shut down the broadcast when trad jazz and modern jazz fans started to beat the shit out of each other, and the whole crowd lost control. The purists thought of blues as part of jazz, so they felt betrayed when they saw electric guitars—a whole bohemian subculture was threatened by the leather mob. There was certainly a political undercurrent in all this. Alan Lomax and Ewan MacColl—singers and famous folk song collectors who were patriarchs, or ideologues, of the folk boom—took a Marxist line that this music belonged to the people and must be protected from the corruption of capitalism. That’s why “commercial” was such a dirty word in those days. In fact the slanging matches in the music press resembled real political fisticuffs: phrases like “tripe mongers,” “legalized murder,” “selling out.” There were ludicrous discussions about authenticity. Yet the fact is, there was actually an audience for the blues artists in England. In America most of those artists had got used to playing cabaret acts, which they quickly found out didn’t go down well in the UK. Here you could play the blues. Big Bill Broonzy realized he could pick up a bit of dough if he switched from Chicago blues to being a folksy bluesman for European audiences. Half of those black guys never went back to America, because they realized that they were being treated like shit at home and meanwhile, lovely Danish birds were tripping over themselves to accommodate them. Why go back? They’d found out after World War II that they were treated well in Europe, certainly in Paris, like Josephine Baker, Champion Jack Dupree and Memphis Slim. That’s why Denmark became a haven for so many jazz players in the ’50s.

Voxalis à Thierry Moral, manifartiste éclectique J'aurais pu être le saltimbanque de l'âge de glace entrecoupant mes espiègleries avec l'ouragan Katrina plus au sud des marécages de La Nouvelle-Orléans, c'était peut-être pour moi plus approprié de jouer dans une pièce de théâtre muet avec des héros en pâte à modeler et papier mâché à Montmartre sur la scène d'un Cabaret du Néant. Le langage corporel trahit mon esprit hors-la-loi– je peux, mais je ne veux pas courir entre les cactus séniles, je peux, mais je ne veux pas entretenir la braise qui couve par amour du feu, je peux, mais je ne veux pas arborer l'étendard de l'étonnement par amour de la sensation. Je peux mais je ne sais pas ! Je peux mais je ne comprends pas ! Je peux mais je ne veux pas ! Le ridicule plane tel un aérostat au-dessus de l'œil d'Horus et moi je n'ai pas le temps de vivre les moulins à vent. [Voxalis lui Thierry Moral, manifartist eclectic Aș fi putut fi saltimbancul epocii de gheață întretăindu-mi giumbușlucăriile cu uraganul Katrina mai la sud de mlaștinile din New Orleans, poate era mai nimerit să joc într-o piesă de teatru mut cu eroi din plastilină și papier mâché în Montmartre, pe scena unui Cabaret du Néant. Limbajul corpului îmi trădează fărădelegea gândului - pot, dar nu vreau să alerg printre cactuși senili, pot, dar nu vreau să întrețin jarul mocnit de dragul focului, pot, dar nu vreau să arborez stindardul mirării de dragul senzației. Pot, dar nu știu! Pot, dar nu înțeleg! Pot, dar nu cred! Ridicolul planează ca un aerostat peste ochiul lui Horus și eu n-am timp să trăiesc morile de vânt.] (p. 32) Imperfectele emoții

how the heroines and the vamps / bar girls were unmistakably separate—the modestly clad good girls with the innocent eyes and the sexily dressed cabaret girls with the knowing eyes—and never could the twain meet.

Dames N’ Games, Southern California's largest topless sports bar and grill, offers an unrivaled experience in Downtown LA and Van Nuys. Enjoy local cuisine, live sports on HD TVs, and top-notch entertainment across 22,000 sq ft, including a sports bar, main cabaret, and VIP lounge. Open until 1 a.m. daily, it's the ultimate destination for game days, featuring everything from NFL to college football, with private party options in luxurious settings.

Rien n'est ennuyeux a contempler comme le bonheur et la vertu. Une dame de mes voisine, vrai pilier d'eglise comme on est pilier du cabaret. Sans doute porte-on mieux les injures sans fondement que celles qu'on sait meritees. La grandeur d'un destin se fait de ce qu'on refuse plus que de ce qu'on obtient. Ce travers qu'ont les vieilles coquettes solitaires de se croire aimees de tous les hommes d'importance. A la Cour, personne hors de Roi, ses ministres et ses marechaux, n'a rien a faire. Les journees se passent en vains propos, en jeux, en intrigues. Il est inutile de vouloir enseigner les nuances a un aveugle. C'est le propre de l'homme de rever du superflu quand il manque du necessaire.

All the world’s a stage; and the men and women merely players; they have their entrances and their exits, and one man in his time plays many parts. William Shakespeare

ME COMPRARÉ UNA RISA Me compraré una risa (Je, je, je… Jo, jo, jo… Ja, ja, ja…) Es la risa mecánica del mundo, la risa del magazine y la pantalla, la risa del megáfono y del jazz, la risa sincopada de los negros, la risa asalariada, la risa que se alquila y que se compra… ¡Risa de almoneda y carnaval! Risa de diez centavos o un penique, de albayalde, de ferias y de pista, de cabaret, de maquillaje y de boudoir. Risa de propaganda y de ordenanza municipal y de pregón. La que anuncian las rotativas, las esquinas, las vallas, la radio, el celuloide y el neón y vende en todo el mundo la gran firma «Standard Smile Company», (Je, je, je… Ja, ja, ja… Jo, jo, jo…) «¡Smile, Smile, Smile!» Ahí pasa el pregonero. Es aquel viejo vendedor de sombras que ahora vende sonrisas. «¡Risas, risas, risas! Risas fabricadas a troquel como pesos y como centavos.

La evidencia de la inutilidad de todo esfuerzo, y esa sensación de cadáver futuro erigiéndose ya en el presente y llenando el horizonte del tiempo, acaban por embotar nuestras ideas, nuestras esperanzas y nuestros músculos, de tal suerte que el aumento de impulso suscitado por la recentísima obsesión se convierte, una vez implantada irrevocablemente en el espíritu, en un estancamiento de nuestra vitalidad. Así esta obsesión nos incita a llegar a serlo todo y nada. Normalmente, debería ponernos ante la única elección posible: el convento o el cabaret. Pero cuando no podemos huir de ella ni por la eternidad ni por los placeres, cuando, hostigados en medio de la vida, estamos igualmente lejanos del cielo y de la vulgaridad, nos transforma en esa especie de héroes descompuestos que lo prometen todo y no cumplen nada: ociosos desriñonándose en el Vacío; carroñas verticales, cuya única actividad se reduce a pensar que dejarán de ser...)

because poor old Cecily was so ugly, even the tide wouldn’t take her out.

It’s silly to feel as though I am losing something. That tug I feel pulling me closer to him, a gossamer thread that connects us through the crowded cabaret. As much as its existence confuses me, as much as I wish it were otherwise, it’s there, joining us together beneath the stars.

Toen Jan Liefkind de ruimte betrad viel zijn mond van verbazing open. Langzaam liep hij langs de tot aan het plafond gevulde schappen. Hier leek de poëzie van de hele wereld bij elkaar te staan. ‘Is dit een bibliotheek?’ vroeg hij aan de rode dame. Ze schudde haar hoofd. ‘Dit is een winkel,’ zei ze. ‘Mijn winkel. Het is mijn hobby.’ Ze ging hem voor naar de kast met Nederlandse poëzie. Gorter, Leopold, Nijhoff, Bloem, Vroman. Allemaal stonden ze daar, onaangeraakt. Zelfs van hem stonden er twee bundels. Jan Liefkind liep verder. Twee planken met IJslandse poëzie, een kast vol Japanse bundels, twee kasten met Franse poëzie. Hij trok er een bundeltje van Michaux uit dat hij niet kende. Bulgaars, Roemeens, Grieks. Vier boekjes uit Bangladesh. De dame met het rode haar en de zigeunerrok had ze van over de hele wereld naar haar winkel in Venice laten komen. Hier stonden ze nu, te wachten op een aardbeving of een brand. Hij rekende het Franse boekje met haar af. ‘Verkoopt u wel eens wat?’ vroeg Jan Liefkind. ‘Een doodenkele keer,’ zei ze terwijl ze het boekje in een papieren zak deed. ― USA Cabaret

This is Zürich for me: The old town that reeks of Dada, James Joyce and Cabaret Voltaire.

Young, socially liberal women whom society called flappers and their male counterparts, labeled sheiks, crowded the cabarets where jazz was performed.

Berlin. You wouldn't believe it now, but during the 20s, Berlin was the capital city of laissez-faire. We had as much jazz as Chicago, nightclubs and cabarets down every other street, and the city smelled of freedom and poverty.

This is the ordinary Scottish recipe for toddy; an alternative interpretation is that of my old Russian friend, the late M Baleiev, who founded the famouse Chauve-Souris cabaret show in Moscow and, after the Russian revolution, brought it to London and New York. Here is his version: 'First you put in whisky to make it strong; then you add water to make it weak; next you put in lemon to make it sour, then you put in sugar to make it sweet. You put in more whisky to kill the water. Then you say "Here's to you" - and you drink it yourself.

In 1933, the KadeKo was taken over by Hans Schindler and remained a successful, if aryanised cabaret. The majority of Jewish and left-leaning performers and cabaret artists had fled from the new regime. It remained a carefully controlled and regulated venue until the eventual closure of all theatres by law in 1944.

EBB: As I recall, “Cell Block Tango” was a very difficult number to write. It’s not so much a song as a musical scene for six women, and each has to tell her personal story in the course of a musical refrain that keeps repeating. It was difficult because each of the stories had to be entertaining and also meaningful. Each one had to be of a length that didn’t go on too long and run the risk of being boring. We kept rewriting and rewriting those stories that the women told to go with the refrain— He had it coming He had it coming He only had himself to blame. If you’d have been there If you’d have seen it I betcha would have done the same! KANDER: When Gwen was sick during Chicago, Liza took over for eight weeks and she came close to making the show a hit. EBB: She did all of Gwen’s blocking. KANDER: She learned that show in a week. EBB: I guess I should confess this. I had been with Liza in California, and when we were on our way back to New York on the plane, when I knew Liza was going to do Chicago, I was egging her on to get little things back into the show that I lost during my collaboration with Fosse. I desperately wanted “My Own Best Friend” to be a song just for Roxie. That was the way it was originally supposed to be done. But Bobby took that song and added Chita as Velma. He had them at the edge of the stage, obviously mocking the high-end cabaret singers with their phony Oh-look-at-me attitude. He hated songs like— KANDER: “I Did It My Way.” EBB: And “I Gotta Be Me.” He hated them.

Lies told fresh in the night fires of our dwindling solstice. A yarn becomes a legend. Tobacco spittle sears on charred logs. Light like foot lamps in a Bowery cabaret. Shadows fall upwardly to dance on a white forehead. All ablaze but the sockets of the eyes. Dark rings hold their truths. A good man turns wicked by the light of a Sturgeon Moon. Mephistopheles one and all. Savage saturnalia.

The film version of Chicago is a milestone in the still-being-written history of film musicals. It resurrected the genre, winning the Oscar for Best Picture, but its long-term impact remains unclear. Rob Marshall, who achieved such success as the co-director of the 1998 stage revival of Cabaret, began his career as a choreographer, and hence was well suited to direct as well as choreograph the dance-focused Chicago film. The screen version is indeed filled with dancing (in a style reminiscent of original choreographer Bob Fosse, with plenty of modern touches) and retains much of the music and the book of the stage version. But Marshall made several bold moves. First, he cast three movie stars – Catherine Zeta-Jones (former vaudeville star turned murderess Velma Kelly), Renée Zellweger (fame-hungry Roxie Hart), and Richard Gere (celebrity lawyer Billy Flynn) – rather than Broadway veterans. Of these, only Zeta-Jones had training as a singer and dancer. Zellweger’s character did not need to be an expert singer or dancer, she simply needed to want to be, and Zellweger’s own Hollywood persona of vulnerability and stardom blended in many critics’ minds with that of Roxie.8 Since the show is about celebrity, casting three Hollywood icons seemed appropriate, even if the show’s cynical tone and violent plotlines do not shed the best light on how stars achieve fame. Marshall’s boldest move, though, was in his conception of the film itself. Virtually every song in the film – with the exception of Amos’s ‘Mr Cellophane’ and a few on-stage numbers like Velma’s ‘All That Jazz’ – takes place inside Roxie’s mind. The heroine escapes from her grim reality by envisioning entire production numbers in her head. Some film critics and theatre scholars found this to be a cheap trick, a cop-out by a director afraid to let his characters burst into song during the course of their normal lives, but other critics – and movie-goers – embraced this technique as one that made the musical palatable for modern audiences not accustomed to musicals. Marshall also chose a rapid-cut editing style, filled with close-ups that never allow the viewer to see a group of dancers from a distance, nor often even an entire dancer’s body. Arms curve, legs extend, but only a few numbers such as ‘Razzle Dazzle’ and ‘Cell Block Tango’ are treated like fully staged group numbers that one can take in as a whole.

sólo un instante, sólo un colibrí dura el hombre aquí en la tierra.

The newspaper man, listening, thought, "An infant gone mad with her dolls. Or no, vice has lost its humanness. She's the symbol of new sin—the unhuman, passionless whirligig of baby girls and baby boys through the cabarets.

Restai ferma dietro le sue spalle. Sopra il pianoforte era appeso un ritratto di Hitler. La postura di tre quarti, lo sguardo frontale. Gli occhi sdegnati, appesantiti dalle borse, le guance flaccide. Indossava un lungo soprabito grigio, aperto abbastanza per sfoggiare le croci di ferro guadagnate nella Grande Guerra. Teneva un braccio piegato, il pugno sul fianco: sembrava una madre che rimbrotta il figlio, altro che un combattente; una moglie che si riposa un attimo, dopo aver strofinato con la liscivia i pavimenti. C'era in lui qualcosa di femminile, tanto che i baffi parevano posticci, incollati per un imminente numero di cabaret: non ci avevo mai fatto caso.

Era un cabaret de fama mundial, donde se habían aburrido los hombres más célebres de Europa y América.

There are fewer tourists than you typically encounter on the Malecón. The attacks at the Montmartre cabaret and the Tropicana have rattled nerves and people are on edge. Then there are the bombs exploding around the city at random intervals, interspersed between parties, elegant dinners and lunches, and trips to the beach. And Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

quirky new café-cum-cabaret, El Quat Gats,

Rodolphe Salis was a tall, red-headed bohemian with a coppery beard and boundless charisma. He had tried and failed to make a success of several different careers, including painting decorations for a building in Calcutta. But by 1881 he was listless and creatively frustrated, uncertain where his niche might lie. More pressingly, he was desperate to secure a steady income. But then he had the ingenious idea to turn the studio which he rented, a disused post office on the resolutely working-class Boulevard de Rochechouart, into a cabaret with a quirky, artistic bent. He was not the first to attempt such a venture: La Grande Pinte on the Avenue Trudaine had been uniting artists and writers to discuss and give spontaneous performances for several years. But Salis was determined that his initiative would be different – and better. A fortuitous meeting ensured that it was. Poet Émile Goudeau was the founder of the alternative literary group the Hydropathes (‘water-haters’ – meaning that they preferred wine or beer). After meeting Goudeau in the Latin Quarter and attending a few of the group’s gatherings, Salis became convinced that a more deliberate form of entertainment than had been offered at La Grande Pinte would create a venue that was truly innovative – and profitable. The Hydropathe members needed a new meeting place, and so Salis persuaded Goudeau to rally his comrades and convince them to relocate from the Latin Quarter to his new cabaret artistique. They would be able to drink, smoke, talk and showcase their talents and their wit. Targeting an established group like the Hydropathes was a stroke of genius on Salis’s part. Baptising his cabaret Le Chat Noir after the eponymous feline of Edgar Allan Poe’s story, he made certain that his ready-made clientele were not disappointed. Everything about the ambience and the decor reflected Salis’s unconventional, anti-establishment approach, an ethos which the Hydropathes shared. A seemingly elongated room with low ceilings was divided in two by a curtain. The front section was larger and housed a bar for standard customers. But the back part of the room (referred to as ‘L’Institut’) was reserved exclusively for artists. Fiercely proud of his locality, Salis was adamant that he could make Montmartre glorious. ‘What is Montmartre?’ Salis famously asked. ‘Nothing. What should it be? Everything!’ Accordingly, Salis invited artists from the area to decorate the venue. Adolphe Léon Willette painted stained-glass panels for the windows, while Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen created posters. And all around, a disorientating mishmash of antiques and bric-a-brac gave the place a higgledy-piggledy feel. There was Louis XIII furniture, tapestries and armour alongside rusty swords; there were stags’ heads and wooden statues nestled beside coats of arms. It was weird, it was wonderful and it was utterly bizarre – the customers loved it.

The most adventurous and challenging cabaret of the Weimar years was the Kabarett der Komiker or KadeKo (Cabaret of Comedians). It was established in December 1924, by Paul Morgan, Kurt Robitschek and actor/singer Max Hansen at a venue called Rakete (the Rocket) in nearby Kantstraße. The venture was immediately successful and a year later moved to the 450-seat Theater am Kurfürstendamm, further down the street.

By 1920, Berlin was the third largest city in the world and the largest in Europe. The Greater Berlin Act had encompassed all the surrounding neighbourhoods and suburbs, and overnight the population more than doubled, to 4.5 million – the most populous the city has ever been. This exciting, bustling city boasted 120 newspapers, 40 theatres, and a wealth of cinemas and cabarets. The abolition of censorship enabled anything – and everything – to thrive.

Many of the stars of its theatres and cabarets had already fled the country and their venues had been ‘aryanised’. Some writers and artists managed to flee to other European countries and the United States, but where could the ordinary Berliners go, and what would happen to their homes and businesses if they fled?

As early as May 1945, the newly appointed Commandant of Berlin, General Nikolai Berzarin, decreed that cinemas, theatres, cabarets and sports arenas, all closed by law a year earlier, should be reopened wherever possible, even with the 9pm curfew that had been imposed. By June, cabaret shows had resumed in Cafe Leon, at the site of the former KaDeKo club; The Theater des Westens had a ballet programme running in repertory, and movies were again being screened at the Marmorhaus and the Astor Kino. Restaurants had begun emerging from the rubble and pavement cafes flourished once again.

By 1898, the Café des Westens had been founded, and for more than a decade it was the spiritual home for artists, writers and publishers. As a hub of artistic and literary life, it is credited with being the birthplace of the idea of modern German cabaret.