Satie's Dadaist Cancelled Performance

I was doing a bit of research on the French composer Erik Satie when I came across an incredible ballet by the composer called "Relâche." If I ask you to think of music by Satie, you would almost definitely think of the soothing melodic "Gymnopediès" that he wrote for solo piano. A lot of people in fact don't know Satie as well as they thought. Satie was an eccentric and strange composer, often employing techniques found in Dada art into his experimental performances of his highly original music.

The title of this ballet in English means "tonight's performance is cancelled." If you put a sign with the word relâche written on it outside a theatre in France, the audience members would turn around and go home. This in fact was what most people did on the night of the first performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. The people who did make it into the auditorium were welcomed with a notice that told those music/dance patrons that if they didn't like the night's performance, they were entitled to f*ck off.

The actual performance of the ballet (or more correctly, nonsensical Dada performance) was described as pornographic and (as usual with the Théâtre des Champs-Élyées) caused a riot. The ballet included someone carefully measuring the stage, a dancer placing a crown on a audience member's head, men in evening clothes, dressing and undressing and a huge amount of other surreal non sequiters. The was a film called "Entr'acte" that was shown in the intermission. It was also full of nonsense ideas and actions and used famous artists as actors. The music was also very experimental and confronting to those expecting something like the "Gymnopediès." Satie wrote small passages of persistent rhythmic music with the instruction to repeat the passage for the entire scene. The composer Darius Milhaud writes about the performance:

"Relâche was given for the first time at the Théâtre des Champs Elyseés in 1924. It is on a book and with settings by Francis Picabia, a ballet in two acts commissioned and staged by the Ballets Suédois of Rolf de Maré, choreography by Jean Borlin, It was the height of the Surrealist period. Between the two acts there was an important innovation, a performance of René Clair's film Entr'acte with music by Satie. To the delight of spectators, Satie and Picabia appeared themselves in the film. The music of Relâche ranges from truculence of certain marching songs to the exquisite tenderness of the accompaniments to the dances of "La Femme."

In the marvelous '20s, everything went, and the audience was not surprised at the end of the premiére of Relâche, to see Satie arrive on stage, to the acclaim of his cheering friends, in a little 5 horsepower Citroën car driven by Picabia."

Here is René Clair's film Entr'acte on YouTube:

This performance was also the last public appearance of Satie. A reviewer wished that Satie would die and go to hell after witnessing this performance.

Nice find. Satie has always been a bit of a trickster, and Dada was a great way to own some of the complaints about modernistic music.

I wouldn't say I was complaining. I really like Dada and Relâche.