Familiar with this one? I had never heard of Cabaret Voltaire until recently. Founded in Zurich in February 1916 by German refugee Hugo Ball, the Cabaret Voltaire was a venue for literary soirées and cabarets. A simple room above the Meierei Cafe, the Cabaret Voltaire was named after the French Enlightenment writer and philosopher.
Within only a few weeks of opening to the public, an inner circle of artists had formed to collaborate with Ball developing the evening performances. For a mere six months, the Cabaret Voltaire became home for a range of artists, most arriving with political and artistic agendas, but all coordinating to become responsible for performance works:
- Hugo Ball (poetry, piano)
- Emmy Hennings (singing, dancing)
- Tristan Tzara (poetry)
- Marcel Janco (masks, costumes)
- Jean Arp (painting)
- Sophie Taeuber-Arp (dancing, choreographing, painting)
- Richard Huelsenbeck
Characteristics of Cabaret Voltaire were:
- an attack on the bourgeois (middle class)
- outrage at the futility of war (in the midst of WWI)
- limited reliance on conventional use of language (words)
- avant-garde and experimental in style
- spoken word
- sound poetry
- movement
- symbolic costumes, props and scenery (often adhering to the principles of Cubism and Dadaism)
- music (piano)
- unconventional dancing
Nightly cabaret performances and readings were so unorthodox, their signature became a style of its own. And so, the form Cabaret Voltaire was born and along with it came the origins of the Dada movement in the arts.
(Here is a an explanation of what constitutes a sound poem with two audio examples from artists involved in Dadaism in Germany.)
Note: as students of theatre will access this post for study purposes, Wikipedia links have been included as a launching pad for further research.