Dancing Tongue's Dada Show and Sunbeams

The Sunbeams at The Sun Magazine this month begin with a quote from Terry Pratchett. J'adore M. Prachett. One of the goals of my meditations is to hush up that part of the brain he's talking about. Or, failing that, to convince it to take vacations more often. Last night, Dancing Tongue kicked me in the head with a ballet slipper, and the 90% of my brain that tries to normalize the miraculous took exactly such a holiday.

Last night, WordSpace produced the Dancing Tongue Dada Show:

SATURDAY, JUNE 10 ["THE DADA SHOW"]
UNDERMAIN THEATER 3200 MAIN STREET $15 8:00 P.M.
Dancing Tongue pays tribute to the birth of the absurdist avant garde with this no-holds-barred homage to the likes of Andre Breton, Alfred Jarry and Kurt Switters. Featuring guest artists from the Dallas theater world, the show will cure your rationalist inclinations and provide an evening safe for your nonsensical self.

Which description evinced itself True with the Big T. Pratchett would have lurved it.

Tim Cloward opened the show with a quick history of DaDa, and Tzara got his due there and elsewhere in the show. After I closed the box office and got inside to see the show, I discovered that my tummy muscles were in for a work-out.

"Pinochio 2001" was Jeff Swearingen in a tux with monkey ears on his head, a bag of plastic bones, and a Pinocchio puppet offering a redux of the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odessy, pounding the Pinochio puppet with the plastic bones and doing a very good impression of a rampaging chimpanzee. Layers of funny going on there.

"Video DaDa #1" consisted of a tape projected on a backlit screen of people in "space suits" made of newspaper playing drums and dancing around at rather high speed. (I KNOW I've seen this film somewhere, help me out, what is it?) Chad Evans and Kim Corbet accompanied on drum and bass, and the music fell slowly into time with the action on screen, and then morphed into covers of George Clinton and P-Funk tunes....I thought I would cry with happiness. As Corbet said later in the show, music in the background, "Texture for my ears."

"Found Object Ballet #2" was set to a piano suite by Eric Satie (props for that choice gang), and consisted of the backlit screen illuminated by a flashlight and ... yes, Kitchen Utensiles dancing in the light. It was a sublimely beautiful and peaceful moment in a show that otherwise asked us to laugh at Beauty because we hold it sacred, and taking one's sacred world a bit lightly from time to time is very good for the soul. I thought I could live in that moment forever, just the way I want to live inside some of Proust's sentences. The audience was simply rapt by this piece, and then slid cooperatively back into the jokes and inside-out fun of the rest of the evening without a hitch. Good Audience.

Over the course of the evening, three audience members were ordered by Prussian Fascist in a Polyester Fringe Western Jacket to write an epic play. One act each. "Inventiam Viam Aut Faciam" was Brad McEntire and Jeff Swearigen performing the play. The thrid act was just a simely face on the paper. Both men ad libbed a thorough embarassement of the author, which double irony of taking seriously what can not be taken seriously and then spoofing the seriousness -- "For Your Act Three, A Mere Smiley FACE, You Are Forced to Regard My Nipple for a Straight Five Minutes!" shouted McEntire, and then bared his nipple with a hateful grin -- I actually cried with laughter.

Delicious. After the show, one my students who attended said that WordSpace should sell DVDs of these performances, and I hearby NTS that point to bring up at the next meeting. Revenue is Revenue, and we might as well get on that idea. Thanks Jose. Cool kid that you are.

To Dancing Tongue, my friends and playmates, Brava! Bravo! T'was texture for my brain. Richard, Fran, Lisa, as always, your dedication to craft and gorgeousness makes me grateful. To The Undermain and Catherine Owens, many thanks again. Y'all's support of WordSpace is beyond price.