To promote the art of cabaret, we host international exchanges among cabaret artists, teachers and coaches, writers, historians, and fans. A growing community of cabaret artists and enthusiasts from around the globe gather for concerts and educational workshops. 

Like cabaret itself, connection is at the heart of these unique events: revealing how performers connect to their material and how our performance connects to the audience. We share personal stories that are vital to our universal experience.

OUR HISTORY: In 2016, Chicago- and Paris-based cabaret artists began discussing how we could help each other promote the art of cabaret. To those who said “Cabaret est mort”, we said boldly “Vive le cabaret”.

In Chicago, a kitchen-table meeting of Claudia Hommel, Elizabeth Doyle, Lynne Jordan, and Roxane Assaf gathered a team of volunteers from among the 200-plus members of Chicago Cabaret Professionals, participants in the ongoing SongShop workshop, singers who had participated in Singers Jazz Workshops in Paris in 2014 and 2015, students of the late Gwen Pippin, and others.

In Paris, discussions began at an outdoor café (of course) with Mylène Launay, animatrice of the weekly bal musette at Rue Mouffetard; Jean-Claude Orfali from the Cabaret Lapin Agile in Montmartre; and artists associated with Christian Stalla, editor of 80-plus titles in Collection Cabaret published by l’Harmattan. (View Christian’s artwork Au Cabaret on our homepage.)

Our first conference, in 2017, was 3 days in Paris,followed by an 8-day conference in Chicago in 2018, an ambitious 11-day “Tour de France” in September 2019, a week-long post-Covid conference in Chicago in May 2022 and a return to France in late summer 2023.

In a short time, we have accomplished a lot.

• Connexion workshops and conferences have helped raise the level of craft and artistry among dozens of performers.
• Our exchanges have inspired greater collaboration across the various genres encompassed by Cabaret.
• In Chicago, these connections have nurtured the formation of a vital roster of Black Voices in Cabaret.
• The Connexion experience has brought together a coalition of cabaret organizations that now organizes Chicago Cabaret Week as an annual festival.
• In Paris, a new association CABARET CONNEXION was formed in December 2022 to facilitate our ongoing exchanges and create the first ever Cabaret Festival of Paris.