Review of Dada Poetry Salon March 21 at Cornelia St. Cafe

It was beautiful. It was real. It was horrible. It was fun.

How else can you describe one of the more unique events to occur in poetry land in NYC this spring?

Dada Poetry Salon was everything and more than people expected. The highlights included Christ on a Crossword Puzzle, dynamic poetry from a plethora of out-of-towners including the awesome Lisa Grunberger, the sublime Greg Moglia, and in-towners including Jackie Sheeler, Karen Hildebrand plus a phenomenal sound poetry set by the reincarnation of Hugo Ball (as voiced by Gary Glazner) who took Karawane to new places, including a cell phone improvisation that Hugo himself would have been proud of. Not to mention tributes to Mina Loy, including Kathi Georges' end-of-show fireworks, plus every regular doing their most vibrant work to date, inlcuding Jay Chollick, Bob Hart and others...

The most impressive part of the show came with a subversive set by City Scum Shot, who took an audio track of a Hollywood recreation of a rape scene inspired by Pablo Escobar and combined two men on stage, armed with small chains, wandering, exploring circadian rhythms underlying the ultraviolence. I'm just sad that this phenomenal performance was not a) met with a more open-minded view and/or b) videotaped because the documentarians were among the vocal throng that got pissed off by their performance. (or is there a tape floating around that I don't know about? fingers crossed...). The net result was a shout-a-thon of audience members screaming that (in essence) what the boys were doing wasn't art, while the dynamic duo nevertheless continued, without losing control, until finally, their buttons were pushed too far, as an audience member raced to the stage and ("accidentally", and in the "dada" spirit) broke the tape recorder they were using as a soundtrack.

Interesting to observe. Nevertheless, the host, Kathi Georges, later reproved the audience act of stopping a performance as a blatent disregard of the (considered) one-way fourth wall of the stage, which in her experience, should only be broken by performers themselves.

It was a real mamajamma. Wish you were there.