The uncorked variety show Champagne Cabaret bubbles up at Chinatown's Great Star Theater with a sparkling blend of graceful aerial acrobatics and gross-out gags.

You are being inundated with Valentine's Day date-night options this time of year, though none are likely to involve live performance acts that employ human saliva and chewed food. But if that’s your bag, you’ll want to consider tickets to the subversive, indie date-night revue show Champagne Cabaret, which opened Thursday night at the Great Star Theater and runs through March 4.

Your cast is basically six performers and two wandering live musicians. The showstopper highlights come from aerial dancer and Cirque Du Soleil veteran Pink Puma, who was known as Polina Volchek when she placed second at the 2014 World Pole Dance championships and was on America’s Got Talent. The whole pole and aerial dance thing is certainly catching on more, but she has plenty of moves you likely haven’t seen before, executed with a high degree of skill and dangerousness. The live music is a nice touch, featuring guitarist Eric McFadden — who’s played with George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars, and fronted the popular 1990s SF band Liar.

But the gross-out gags are what you’ll be chatting about afterward, courtesy of a husband-and-wife vaudeville duo called Daredevil Chicken. Longtime local magician Paul Nathan mines old-time sleight-of-hand and card tricks, but delivered with a dash of audience involvement shticks that make everyone squirm and laugh simultaneously. And a very unconventional act called Sterling the Bubblesmith gets a lot more mileage out of bubble shenanigans than you’d think is possible, with an endless array of bubble tricks up his sleeve.

It’s a variety show, and like most of them, Champagne Cabaret is a little uneven. Not every act soars, and it sticks with pretty much the exact formula of Paul Nathan’s previous Great Star shows Dark Kabaret and Twisted Cabaret.

But if you specifically seek out live shows that are outside the grip of the modern LiveNation/Goldenvoice/Another Planet Entertainment monopoly, this show is for you. All of these performers work in genres considered either too edgy or too passé for mainstream audiences, but they approach their craft with sincere discipline and passion. Yes, many of these perfomace arts are of a certain vintage, but Champagne Cabaret will have you raising your glass throughout.

Champagne Cabaret runs Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.,m., through March 4 (plus a Tuesday, February 14 show) at the Great Star Theater, 636 Jackson Street (at Kearny Street). $30, Ticket here  

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Image: Champagne Cabaret