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If I had a time machine, that’s probably where I’d want to go – to the Cabaret Voltair in Zurich in 1916, where “Dadaism” – the most entertaining artistic movement of all time, that made a game of the highest of human expressions.
It had exploded just the first world war and in neutral Switzerland were joined intellectuals and artists of every kind and nation, refugees and dissidents, objectors and peace activists from all over Europe. This is how, by chance or necessity, the best of the intelligentsia and of the continental unrest found themselves in the same place, with a huge desire to forget the brutality of that historical moment, erase the artistic tradition of the past and bring on a provocative breath of fresh air.
Director Hugo Ball, founded this legendary cabaret and in the club reunited artist friends such as Hans Arp, musicians, philosophers and writers such as Tristan Tzara (the theorist of the group), giving life to ironic and desecrating evenings dedicated to art, to theatre with the Sonia Delaunay’s cubist and two-dimensional costumes, to the new and revolutionary black music, to the African dances of Sophie Tauber (Harp’s wife) in the double role of choreographer and costume designer, to the reading of noisy and cacophonic poems simultaneously, where voices overlap in the general chaos.
He comes on the scene himself with improbable costumes that have become legendary and which respond to all of Dadism’s nonsense vocation.
The audience does not always understand the performance of this group of brilliant wackos, and often protest by launching vegetables and unleashing brawls, without realising that what they were taking part in was a golden moment of cutting-edge artistry of the Twentieth Century.
