Circus, Dada, Vaudeville

Abstract

Avant-garde artists, like Hugo Ball, Sophie Taeuber, Tristan Tzara and other Dadaists who sought exile in Switzerland due to World War I, were particularly intrigued by circus and vaudeville practices and aesthetics, and their potential for innovation and critique. In this regard, the Dadaists understood their activities and the famous Cabaret Voltaire as a stage on which anti-war sentiments and anti-nationalism were celebrated as a “buffoonery and requiem mass”. By considering early Dada productions, this chapter explores the historical avant-garde between popular and experimental theatre strategies and shows that vaudeville – both a genre and a technique – can be identified as a link between circus practices and Dada experiments. Accordingly, the Dada stage not only shared strategies and performance practices (interacting with the audience and the variety format) with popular theatre forms, but a history that goes back to older forms of entertainment – to fairground theatres and itinerant spectacles. These spaces were reinterpreted by avant-garde artists and provided transnational foundations for the development of avant-garde strategies.