Come To The Cabaret.(Arts)(popularity of cabaret shows)

Byline: Ginanne Brownell; With Jessica Au in London and Amber Haq in Paris

Today's geopolitical climate has created the perfect conditions for a revival of the satiric musical genre. And it's no longer just dancing women in sequins.

It's Friday night at The Cabaret Sauvage and the crowd of twenty- and thirtysomethings is transfixed by a troupe of trapeze artists flying through the air. When the acrobatics end, four women clad in traditional Moroccan robes walk to the center of the stage. Before the rapt audience, B'Net Houriyat, a musical group from the Moroccan tribe of Houra, begins to sing haunting melodies that blend the desert's choral traditions with North African femininity. It's all in an evening's entertainment courtesy of "Les Folles Nuits Berberes" -- The Crazy Berber Nights -- at Paris's trendiest nightspot, where the old-time magic of cabaret comes to life with a new twist. "The sense of energy, freedom and emotion in an intimate space -- that is cabaret," says Meziane Azaiche, creative director at the Sauvage.

Nightlife is a cabaret all over the world these days. Clubs, festivals and small concert venues are hosting eclectic performances, often with a distinct international flavor, that are drawing not just old-school fans but introducing a whole new generation to the rich and sometimes risque musical genre. Last fall, New York's Carnegie Hall hosted the "Berlin in Lights" festival, which featured eight nights of German-style cabaret, and the Mabel Mercer Foundation's Cabaret Convention lured crowds to Lincoln Center. Last June, some 50,000 fans attended more than 200 performances during the 16-day Adelaide Cabaret Festival in Australia. This month American singer Michael Feinstein is launching a cabaret season at London's Shaw Theatre, where he will join Chita Rivera, Ute Lemper and other cabaret artists for performances throughout the spring. At the Jermyn Street theater across town, stars such as Julie Wilson and Jeff Harner will be performing in "The American Songbook in London" starting in February. And a new production of the 1998 Broadway revival of "Cabaret," directed by Sam Mendes, has been playing to sold-out crowds in Paris and Berlin. "Cabaret clubs come and go, but the genre will never go away," Feinstein says.

The new burst of popularity comes as no surprise to Mark McInnes, an Australia-born, London-based cabaret performer who goes by the stage name Dusty Limits. "It's a reaction to how overly produced, thoroughly edited and fundamentally contrived most popular entertainment is," he says. "We are so sick of the plastic iPod universe that we are forced to inhabit, we are excited to be in a room with a living breathing human being who is opening his heart and soul."

Translated literally from the French as "small room," cabaret is not easy to define. The genre was born in the 19th-century ...