Quick answer: “cabaret dance” can refer to dance performed within cabaret—often theatrical, personality-driven and designed for close audience connection. It is not one standardized dance vocabulary.

What makes dance feel like cabaret?

Context matters. Choreography may incorporate jazz, burlesque, theatrical dance, character work or specialty movement, but the defining quality is often how the performer relates to the room.

Cabaret dance is not automatically burlesque

Burlesque can appear inside cabaret, but cabaret dance does not necessarily involve striptease. The larger cabaret format can include many performance forms.

See What Kinds of Acts Are in Cabaret? and What Is Cabaret?.