Dada Ball Is A Blast

They came dressed up in masks and without, glittering and threatening, as questions marks, walking disposable bags, corpses, tripods, discarded manuscripts, rock stars, ringmasters, and 1920s hoofers, everything and anything glamorous and silly and aesthetically surprising — and if you could pull it off, all those things combined.

Even the food that was served was unexpected: Chicken salad in a green ice cream cone, anyone?

Actually it was quite good, the chicken salad, animated by grapes and almonds and something else I can’t identif

It was all in the great spirit of the unexpected that animates Dada, the early 20th century avant-garde movement.

The art and political movement emerged in Europe in the teens of the 20th century, a left-wing aesthetic silliness at whose heart was a zest for life in the face of the spirit-killing carnage of World War One.

It was all on display Thursday night at New Haven’s first-ever Dad Ball, in the lobby of the Yale University Art Gallery, in conjunction with its current Everything Is Dada exhibition.

The evening featured people strutting their stuff, taking photographs, wondering who is beneath the costumes, staying in character, and muttering, when asked to explain the essence of Dada: ​“Dadadadadadadadada.”

The ring-mistress of the proceedings was Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, one of the far-out European Dada artists who made their way to Greenwich Village. She has remained amazingly young looking, given that she was performing back in 1916 when Dada was born in Zurich.

A few people whispered to this correspondent that the baroness was really Frauke Josenhans, the curator of Everything Is Dada, but, like everything else whispered at the Dada ball, such intelligence must be taken with a serious grain of salsa.

This couple identified themselves as Fringe Movement (“call me Fringe”) and her date for the evening, whom she introduced as Mr. Lucky. Wearing tuxedos and formal wear, including Mr. Lucky’s debonair spats, the couple looked as if they had just slipped off a 40-foot wedding cake to join us at the Dada Ball.

Asked where she hailed from, Fringe said New Haven, but insisted, in the Dada spirit, that it must be spelled Gnu Havin, and so we have.

Further research revealed that Fringe is actually the irrepressible Todd Lyon, owner of vintage clothing emporium Fashionista. So no wonder their get-ups were so good, including, beneath their hats an original bowler Derby from the 1920s.

“Made in Derby,” Lyon pointed out.

Meanwhile, over in the corner of the lobby, ​“Maitreyan,” an ancient South Asian sculpture, was not dressed up for the ball. Not one bit. She actually was looking fairly sad. As a result, she absolutely couldn’t hold a candle to YUAG print curator Suzanne Boorsch (to whom I am married).

Boorsch was helped in her anti-bourgeois behavior by Pamela Franks, the gallery’s deputy curator, who was wearing a snazzy corpse design fitted over some Tyvek.

This correspondent chatted briefly with the corpse and also with Boorsch about why she was wearing a Fontainebleau print on her head, and then a remarkable thing happened: Another couple walked by and they were actually, they said, on their way up to the galleries to, well, look at the Everything Is Dada show.

The man on the left identified himself as a musician called Kid Congo Powers. The fellow on the right called himself Ryan Hill and said he works in the gallery as the curator of education. I’d say maybe yes, maybe no. Can you believe what a person tells you if he is wearing a pot over his head?

The ball was over, alas, by 8 p.m.. But as the signs and wonders and conversation of the evening made clear, Dada is everything and nothing and goes on forever.