Hugo Ball and his partner Emmy Hennings had already been improvising, he on the piano, she reciting and singing in clubs in Zurich, when in January 1916 they decided to open their own Cabaret where they could exhibit works of art, organize poetry readings and put on music and dance shows, all with the aim of denouncing the violence unleashed in Europe by the Great War and denigrating the supposed values in whose name they were fighting. From the very day of the opening, artists who, fleeing from the war, had taken refuge in neutral Switzerland, came to the premises. In particular, a Romanian poet, Tristan Tzara, would become prominent in what would happen at the Cabaret Voltaire, so much so that he would soon lead a revolution that would soon break out from within those walls: the DADA revolution.
