Cabaret and decency: how contemporary definitions of cabaret are shaped by censorship

The abundant ‘cabaret’ events that populate London’s contemporary entertainment scene strategically adopt specific structures and aesthetics. Common points of reference include the Weimar Republic, Berlin clubs of the 1920’s, ‘salacious’ female nudity, ‘outrageous’ camp reveals and inevitable references to Bob Fosse’s ‘Cabaret’. The events often promise to provide a ‘high quality’ drinking and dining experience. In this way ‘nostalgia’ can be turned into financial success. This formulaic approach defines the contemporary understanding of cabaret, omitting vital aspects of the genre while turning it into a purely commercial commodity. My artistic practice as research interrogates the experimental nature of the cabaret of late nineteenth century Paris within a contemporary British context. Setting itself apart from the allure of ‘flesh and cash’ of the West End cabaret, Ms. Paolini’s Phantasmagoria Cabaret, regularly programmed at Hoxton Hall, London, since 2016, focuses on exploring an updated experience of European cabaret within the abandoned British Music Hall and Variety tradition. The wider cultural discourse fails to report on the possibility of different approaches to cabaret. I will draw on particular examples from my practice – how a 60-something performer clad in Y-fronts, for example, was regarded by a certain audience as obscene – to explore the subtleties of contemporary censorship and what it says about our cultural landscape. The ‘body reveal’ – one of the commercial selling points of West End cabaret replica productions – becomes unacceptable in the different context of Ms. Paolini’s Phantasmagoria Cabaret. This article examines how censorship operates in relation to contemporary experimental cabaret, providing an alternative account of the contemporary development of traditional cabaret and suggesting that there are different angles from which to approach discussion of the genre.