I’m Canadian. I’ve been living in the U.S. for many, many years, but the early foundation of my upbringing, that shaped how I see the world, is Canadian. In a lot of ways, Canadians aren’t that different from Americans. But in some ways, we’re closer to European. For me, one of those ways is the association of the word “cabaret” with with a place that’s rather sleazy…
This is common in Europe in the Middle East. In Morocco’s “Dancer to Dancer” interview with Oberon (http://www.casbahdance.org/dancertodancer.htm) she says: “…in the Middle East and the rest of the world, a ‘cabaret’ is a low class dump, a dive — like the whorehouse dive in the movie ‘Cabaret’.”
Shira has a longer commentary on the term in her article on dance styles here:
http://www.shira.net/styles.htm#Overview
(My only beef with her “styles” article is that it doesn’t mention Turkish Oryantal :D)
I find American dancers are often quite surprised to learn that the term “cabaret” is unsavory overseas. I personally am not offended by the use of the term, but for myself, I’ll stick with “nightclub style”.