ZURICH IN PARIS? DADA PERFORMANCE FROM THE CABARET VOLTAIRE TO RELÂCHE

This thesis explores Francis Picabia’s (1879-1953) collaboration with the avant-garde dance troupe the Ballets Suédois on the 1924 production Relâche. I reveal this ballet’s significant links to early performances in Zurich, the city of Dada’s origins. While current scholarship deems Relâche a Dada performance, there has been little analysis of its connection to the anarchic spirit that reigned in the Zurich cabaret. I make a case that Relâche is much more than a work born out of personal rivalries between the project’s collaborators, as is often remarked. Instead, I argue that this production reveals Picabia’s rejection of the turn toward Surrealism within the Dada circles in Paris. The tensions within the Paris Dada group came to a head in 1921 with the staging of two Dada “Saisons,” or seasons, spearheaded by Picabia and the poets Tristan Tzara and André Breton. These differences, which ultimately led Breton to establish the Surrealist movement in 1924 catalyzed Picabia’s critique in Relâche. Through the ballet, Picabia declared his allegiance to an earlier conception of Dada, rooted in multimedia performances that took place at the Cabaret Voltaire and the Galerie Dada: Relâche was conceived as a return to the provocative spirit of Dada’s early days.