Īfter the box-office failure of his 1969 film version of Sweet Charity, Fosse bounced back with Cabaret in 1972, a year that made him one of the most honored working directors in Hollywood. : 609 All of them take place inside the club, : 609 with one exception: ' Tomorrow Belongs to Me', the only song sung by neither the Master of Ceremonies nor Sally Bowles. In the traditional manner of musical theater, most major characters in the stage version sing to express their emotions and advance the plot in the film, however, the musical numbers are entirely diegetic. : 609 Multiple numbers from the stage score were used for the film, which also featured three other songs by Kander and Ebb, including two written for the adaptation. Set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic in 1931, under the presence of the growing Nazi Party, the film is loosely based on the 1966 Broadway musical Cabaret by Kander and Ebb, which was adapted from Christopher Isherwood's semi-autobiographical novel The Berlin Stories (1945) as well as John Van Druten's 1951 play I Am a Camera, which was itself adapted from Isherwood's novel. Collaboration with burlesque performers was given by Brian Viglione as the inspiration for The Dresden Dolls’ look.Cabaret is a 1972 American musical drama film directed by Bob Fosse, and starring Liza Minnelli, Michael York and Joel Grey. The two have become linked following the appearance of performers such as the Chicago burlesque orchestra Apartment (1997–2005) and the emergence of gothic bellydance. The appearance of an identifiable dark cabaret scene coincided with the rise of Neo-Burlesque starting in the 1990s.

With a more aggressive side and a punk or metal background, with some bands also closely associated with the punk cabaret subgenre, for example: Stolen Babies or Harlequin Jones. New sects of dark cabaret have emerged from the previous theatrical dark cabaret. Subsequently, bands began categorising themselves and their performance as dark cabaret, such as San Diego’s The Tragic Tantrum in the US, Katzenjammer Kabarett in France, or Ray Childish in Graz, Austria. Nevertheless, with their musical style and appearance in white face makeup and reduced period clothing, The Dresden Dolls and their fans quickly became the most readily identified with the newly evident dark cabaret genre, garnering the most mainstream attention.

Formed by Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione in 2000, The Dresden Dolls described their music as “Brechtian punk cabaret”, a term coined by Amanda Palmer in early 2003 in part to preclude being labelled by the media as goths. The album included “Flowers” from Dream Home Heartache sung by Rozz Williams together with, among others, “Evil Night Together” by Jill Tracy, “Sometimes, Sunshine” by Revue Noir, and “Coin-Operated Boy” by The Dresden Dolls. The term dark cabaret appears to have become popularized with the release of a 2005 compilation album entitled Projekt Presents: A Dark Cabaret by Projekt Records, a label chiefly associated with the dark wave genre. Canada’s Shift magazine called the album one of the “Top 10 Neo-Cabaret albums of all time. Following her 1996 debut solo album Quintessentially Unreal, San Francisco-based singer/pianist Jill Tracy released her second CD, Diabolical Streak, in 1999. In the 1980s satirical cabaret had been revived and popularised by London-based bands such as Fascinating Aida and Kit and The Widow but the Tiger Lillies incorporated themes of blasphemy, prostitution and bestiality in their songs, sung by Martyn Jacques in a menacing style with a falsetto voice. A collaboration between Rozz Williams and Gitane Demone – both former members of Christian Death – entitled Dream Home Heartache After a song by Roxy Music, was recorded in the Netherlands and released in the United States in 1995 and was described by reviewers as “cabaret noir” or “glam cabaret”. One of the earliest bands to play mainly or exclusively in a style which might now be described as dark cabaret were the Tiger Lillies, formed in London in 1989.

Dark kabaret