A performance dedicated to Betty Baaron Samoa and a talk with Irene Revell

As part of the exhibition «Suzanne Perrottet. After Dada, After Dance» and as a continuation of its engagement with queer-feminist scores, OOR Saloon invites British Afro-Caribbean vocalist, movement artist, and composer Elaine Mitchener to develop a newly commissioned movement performance.

Mitchener introduces a historically overlooked movement voice into the space of Cabaret Voltaire: that of Betty Baaron Samoa, who danced and worked with both Perrottet and Laban, but whose presence and contribution have been largely ignored by dance history and scholarship. Betty Baaron Samoa appears for the first time—both by name and in image—in Perrottet’s autobiography Ein bewegtes Leben. Across various archival photographs, she is visible and active within Laban’s school on Monte Verità, yet her origins and biography remain unknown to this day. «Betty is only seen; one can only imagine what she sounded like. As far as we…