cabaret to be added, destroyed

The exact line that connects cabaret back to dance isn’t always clear: since dance itself is so easy to spot yet difficult to define, throwing your hands in the air and everything into a genre marked “physical theatre” seems the best answer. However, there are times when a piece of physical theatre would have done well to employ dancers rather than healthy, fit actors, and the contemporary cabaret revival owes at least something to the aesthetics of dance.

Like physical theatre, cabaret includes a healthy mixture of talents: strippers, magicians like Piff the Magic Dragon, singers like Dusty Limits, rappers like Mr B alongside those indefinable performers like Tricity Vogue, the Blue Lady. The variety format, notably reinvented by Blonde Ambition at Vive Le Cabaret!, welcomes this diversity. Yet aside from wild cards like Scottee’s Eat Your Heart Out, it is rare to see short-formed choreographic dance in this programmes. Circus skills, even aerial acrobatics transfer easily enough – but why a magazine dedicated to dance now includes cabaret is still not clear.

The simple link, at least for The Shimmy, is through the neo-burlesque revival. Dance Base, which houses The Shimmy offices, has offered burlesque classes for years: the pioneering work here of Gypsy Charms and Viva Misadventure could be seen as seeding the current burlesque scene in Scotland. And burlesque, and striptease, are clearly forms of dance. When The Shimmy kicked off in 2009, burlesque was riding high in Edinburgh – both Blonde Ambition and Itsy’s Collective offered regular evenings – and most variety bills were burlesque heavy.

Ironically, just as cabaret was insisting on its own section in 2010, the neo-burlesque revival was waning. Less burlesque was appearing in the clubs – even the Bongo Club, godfather of Fringe cabaret – was booking fewer striptease acts. Confusion is Sex, the nightclub that had always had burlesque was diversifying into pole-dancing and idiosyncratic live art influenced routines.

Finally, an article in The Scotsman attacked burlesque as anti-feminist, leading to Edinburgh’s most glamorous street protest and a dynamic debate about whether the assumptions of feminist intention behind neo-burlesque were valid. Meanwhile, some burlesque acts were heading back to a raunchier tradition, abandoning the knowing wit for a more erotic emphasis. Kitty Cointeau launched the Brahaha, which got back to the comedians and strippers format. Unlike last year, when the superb Wau Wau Sisters rocked the Assembly through stripping and swinging from the ceiling – and aiming a scattershot satire at the heart of modern America, there are no burlesque only shows this year.

It has become fashionable to attack burlesque, either on aesthetic grounds or feminist. Nevertheless, the cabaret revival owes a great deal to neo-burlesque. Despite its controversial association with striptease, burlesque reintroduced parody to cabaret. Variety had been moribund since it had collapsed into a mush of insipid light entertainment and lazy comedy. Burlesque brought back the sex and satire.

Dusty Limits, the “dark prince” is not a dancer, yet his exotic blend of sexuality and mockery owes much to the style of burlesque. The association of burlesque with vintage fashion gave cabaret a style, recalled classic eras of vaudeville and cabaret, such as the Weimar Republic. Even a duo like The Creative Martyrs – Gustav and Jakob are unlikely to be cutting a caper between their mimes and songs of bleak decadence – draw on the influences burlesque rediscovered. The cabaret audiences were built by burlesque nights. 1927 honed their skills at burlesque evenings, adopting the style and format for a theatrical tour de force.

The echoes of burlesque, a dance form, multiply throughout the cabaret scene. Solo shows, like Vogue’s Blue Lady, Meow Meow  frantic bash through egomania and celebrity, Sarah Louise Young’s Cabaret Whore Trilogy pick up on a choreographic approach to subjects, deconstructing them not through a clear lineal approach but returning to them from different angles. Definitions of dance slip either into the vague or the prescriptive: cabaret performance frequently shares a creative process and structure with choreography, if not a movement vocabulary.

Inevitably, there is an agenda behind The Shimmy’s inclusion of cabaret. Last year, Bryony Kimmings, an eclectic performer who admits she is from the Live Art tradition, appeared in many variety shows. She rocked the house. Aerial is already a regular visitor to the vaudeville. Stronger links between the scenes might lead to short dance works being billed alongside Des O’Connor, expanding the audience base. If a dance publication can find space for cabaret, perhaps comperes can find slots for dancers.

Beyond this, if the burlesque scene has become moribund, a reinjection of dance might be the cure. There is still a thriving amateur scene in the central belt of Scotland: often, its stars have never bothered to learn new skills or develop their choreography beyond stylised gestures. Charms and Misadventure have always had a show-girl edge to their routines, and the best international stars have basic dance discipline – or, like Kiki Kaboom, a fierce intelligence. Blurring boundaries is little help for the poor critic, desperately trying to decipher the codes of genre. But for performers and audiences, it offers potential for great new entertainments.