According to Jerry Pinto, author of Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb [yes, Gary and I tend to read the same books],
[C]abaret was born on 18 November 1881, when Rudolphe Salis opened his ‘Chat Noir’, a cabaret artistique, on Montmartre, Paris. His intention: “We will satirize political events, enlighten mankind, confront it with its stupidity, cure those creeps of their ill-temper..’ The original purpose of cabaret, therefore, was to shock the middle class (epater les bourgeois[sic]). It was more than a bunch of ladies showing off their frilly pantalettes or lack thereof.”(103)
According to Helen, quoted on the same page, “cabaret doesn’t mean just wriggling your body as people think — it’s narration in dance.”
Otohime 