Sophie Taeuber, Emmy Hennings and Suzanne Perrottet were pioneers of the historical avant-garde. As members of the artistic movement of Dadaism (°Zurich, 1916) they mocked art institutions and experimented with language, logic and identity while incorporating an interdisciplinary perspective. However, they were hardly mentioned in the abundance of Dada source material such as manifestos, magazines and reviews. Their status as professional performance artists was mostly overshadowed by the focus on their appealing life styles and bodies.
As a result, they were largely neglected in historical studies. Only recently, scholars such as Dech and Deepwell started rewriting the avant-gardist art history from a feminist perspective. Nevertheless, these studies remain mainly descriptive: in-depth studies about female Dada performances are scarce. The practice of prioritizing text and static image over movement and process through history rendered the female dancing bodies invisible and imperceptible. However, it was exactly through their bodily interventions that they criticized reigning concepts of logic and identity.
This project aims to expand Dada history from a bodily perspective to properly re-imagine the artistic legacy of female Dada performance. This “corporeal reconstitution” wants to render visible the female Dada performers, as key players in the Dada scene. On a performance level, it aims at rendering perceptible the trained dancer’s body and its particular movements.