DADA 100: Poetry Without Verse
Excelsior Theatre, Bucharest, 20 May 2016

A century after the birth of Dada, the Admiral* is still looking for a house to rent. All the styles of the past years came together yesterday and he has found nothing, has found nothing, has found nothing… For one night only, we accommodated him at Exclesior Theatre in Bucharest.

We offered:
☛ Poetry without verses ☛ Verses without words ☛ Peculiar sounds ☛ Phonetic mutations ☛ Rhythm ☛ Improvisation ☛ Experiment ☛ Performance ☛ Corporeality ☛ Vox humana ☛ Glossolalia ☛ Polipoetry ☛ Reverberations ☛ Cutouts ☛ Collages ☛ Noise ☛ Nonsense ☛ DADA

All live, in the extraordinary, simultaneous and spontaneous company of the renowned poets and artists: Tomomi Adachi, Jaap Blonk, Mugur Grosu, Jöel Hubaut, Claudiu Komartin, Angelika Meyer, Enzo Minarelli, Hannah Silva. Hosted by: Claudiu Komartin.

Poems by the performing poets and Tristan Tzara, Hugo Ball, Kurt Schwitters, Raoul Hausmann, Isidore Isou, Marinetti, Giacomo Balla, Pierre Albert-Birot, Welemir Xlebnikow, Alexei Krutschonych, Hide Kinoshita, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, MAVO.

* The admiral is the main character of the simultaneous poem „L’amiral cherche une maison à louer” (The admiral looks for a house to rent), created and performed by Tristan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck and Marcel Janco at Cabaret Voltaire on 31st March 1916. A day after the premiere, Hugo Ball wrote in his diary: “All the styles of the last twenty years came together yesterday. In a typically compressed way, Tzara’s poem shows the conflict of the vox humana with a world that threatens, ensnares, and destroys it, a world whose rhythm and noise are ineluctable”.

The event was part of Bucharest International Poetry Festival 2016, organised by the National Museum of Romanian Literature. Watch the video recording of the event here.