Crossword Dictionary
CABARET
cabaret, nightclub, night club, club, nightspot - n
a spot that is open late at night and that provides entertainment (as singers or dancers) as well as dancing and food and drink; "don't expect a good meal at a cabaret"; "the gossip columnist got his information by visiting nightclubs every night"; "he played the drums at a jazz club"
Cabaret, restaurant that serves liquor and offers a variety of musical entertainment.
The cabaret probably originated in France in the 1880s as a small club in which the audience was grouped around a platform. The entertainment at first consisted of a series of amateur acts linked together by a master of ceremonies; its coarse humour was usually directed against the conventions of bourgeois society. The typical program, which first flourished in the Montmartre district of Paris at the tiny Chat Noir in 1881, listed poetry readings, shadow plays, songs, and comic skits. The primary exponent of French cabaret entertainment was the Moulin Rouge, in Paris; established in 1889 as a dance hall, it featured a cabaret show in which the cancan was first performed and in which many major stars of variety and music hall later appeared. The world of the Moulin Rouge in its heyday was immortalized in the graphic art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.