Fourth
Annual Dada Ball
8 pm-2 am Saturday, Sept. 25 1032 NW 14th Ave. 242-1419
$30 advance $35 door $25 PICA members
A dinner and auction kicks off the fun at a separate site.
The $150 tickets to this swank shindig are already sold out.
Sources deep inside the Dada headquarters say the party theme
this year will be "Heaven and Hell."
Collect all the aluminum foil you own. Glue on many green
buttons. Slip this concoction over your sleeves. Pull on some
striped action slacks for flair. Gelatin your hair, crayon
your cheeks, and cap your teeth. Ladies and gentleman, heathens
of all ages 21 and over, welcome to the 1999 Dada Ball.
For the past four years, the Portland Institute for Contemporary
Art has thrown the party this city talks about the most.
PICA's fund-raiser enlists volunteers from the arts community
to turn the blank space o' the year into a subversive wonderland
(last time, Dada-goers were treated to flower-covered portable
toilets and a photo bed instead of a photo booth)
where you can dance until all those buttons pop right off
the foil. Mmm.
PICA forecasters predict a turnout of 3,000--that's 1,000
more freaks than last year. And one individualist you can
expect yet again is Lady Godada, who, from the first year
on, has officially started the dinner-auction part of the
proceedings with an anti-outfit approach to things. This
time, expect to see her show off her birthday suit not just
to the hoity-toity dinner-goers but to the party people
in the house as well.
Obviously, this sort of behavior is news. We sat down with
Lady Godada to find out her deal.
Willamette Week: Lady Godada, where do you come
from?
Lady Godada: From the land of fantasies and desires.
Are you related to Lady Godiva?
You could say I'm sort of her bad twin sister.
Why do you go to Dada?
Well, a little subversion and scandal is always good for
everyone's spirit.
Do you have a Lord?
Only myself. Well, there was a lord for a while--a companion
last year. He wasn't willing to completely divulge
himself, shall we say.
Can you give me a little more?
He was an able companion. But I do take this opportunity
to sort of bare myself to the world, and perhaps that wasn't
his full interest. So I'll be solo this year.
And how do you generally get to Dada?
Each year, I try to come as a surprise event and I try
to arrive in some way that might support the chaos that's
already going on.
Such as?
Well, of course, I became known when I rode a white horse
through the streets of Coventry. So the first year I arrived
at the Dada Ball, I came on a beautiful white horse, accompanied
by a small, mercurial band of local musicians called 3 Leg
Torso. The second year we were at that, sort of an..."amusement
park," I think you call it here. So I arrived on a Harley
Davidson with the most beautiful man driving. And
the third year we were in one of your warehouses, where
the artists here sort of reconstructed their studios, and
I came in on a conveyer belt.
Indeed. Now, what do you have against clothes?
Nothing. I love clothes, dear. I love clothes. My
closet's full of clothes. But as I say, subversion, scandal,
a little bit of chaos is always good for people. And nudity
tends to do that, for you Americans especially.
Aren't there some health-code issues around having you
come into the dining area naked?
Well, I'm never quite in the dining area, dear. I'm pre-dining.
Although this year there will be some opportunities to see
Lady Godada from some different points of view than, perhaps,
before.
How do you enforce the "look, no touch" rule? Or do
you even have one?
Well, you see, that wasn't such an issue in previous situations.
Here in America, it's been much more of one. In the very
first year, I was grabbed several times. A little slap across
the face does very well. I try to move quickly and skirt
about. Someone reaches for me and I disappear--I evaporate.
Often Lady Godada is very elevated. She rarely walks among
the crowd. And oftentimes she has heavy equipment or heavy
objects with her to keep people from getting close to her.
What is the role of the Lady in the land of Dada?
The role of the Lady is to whet the palate, loosen the
hair, loosen the buttons, loosen the zippers. Get everything
a little bit more free-flowing.
If people follow the Lady's guide, they would all be
naked and then the Dada Ball would...
Oh, no, no, no. They wouldn't all be naked. They would
all just sort of enact their fantasies. Perhaps my fantasy
is to provoke in such a way as to be spirited and to embrace
freedom in that way. But someone else might do it in an
absolutely different way.
Do you have a personal theme song? What gets Lady Godada
through the day?
I'd say opera. But, of course, a good dose of the Pretenders
always does wonders.
What do you do the other 364 days of the year?
Well this isn't the only Dada Ball, you know.
So you travel?
I travel, oh yes, I travel. How do you think I afford my
wardrobe, my lingerie, my lovers--the whole thing?
So you go from ball to ball to ball.
Yes. With, of course, some breaks in between for reading
and cultivating the mind.
Do you have other naked friends?
Well, all my friends are ultimately naked.
At the end of the day.
At the end of the day, they're all definitely naked.
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Willamette Week | originally
published September 22,
1999
|
