'Expressive Dance' as a Form of Approbation of the 'Anti-theatre' Programme of Zurich Dadaism

The purpose of the articleis to formulate the basic principles of the “anti-theatre” programme of Zurich Dadaism, using the concept of “expressive dance” by Rudolf van Laban as a form of their approbation. Theresearch methodologyis based on a basic combination of historical-reconstructive, structural-analytical and comparative methods. Results.The article presents the practice of Hugo Ball’s Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, from which the history of the most radical art movement of the “historical” avant-garde began in 1916, and artistic searches in the field of performing arts, which marked the activities of Tristan Tzara’s DADA Gallery in 1917. The author has also focused his attention on the stages of formation of the “expressive dance” concept by Rudolf van Laban, the world-famous Hungarian choreographer and the participation of the graduates of the Zurich Choreographic Institute in stage experiments of Dadaists. A comparative analysis of the artistic practice of the most radical art movement of the “historical” avant-garde, presented in particular at the Cabaret Voltaire and the DADA Gallery, and the Hungarian artist’s experiments in “free choreography” at the Zurich Choreographic Institute allowed describing the ways of organisation of “another stage reality” proposed by Dadaists and identifying their consonance with ideological and artistic grounds of the “dance grammar” developed by Rudolf van Laban. The scientific novelty of the studyis that the artistic results of the little-studied stage practice of the Zurich Dadaists (including simultaneous poetry and sound poetry) are emphasized through the use of conceptual provisions of Rudolf van Laban’s theory of “expressive dance” and methodology of “dance architecture”.