There is an instant – tho only that – immediately prior to the “live” performance of George Antheil’s Le Ballet mécanique in the National Gallery, an adjunct to the current Dada show there, when, all 16 grand pianos, four drums, three xylophones, gong, siren and assorted alarm bells are silent. An instant later all are in motion, governed by a computer program, the siren piercing but no more so here than the xylophones, the pianos revealing themselves as instruments of percussion – is this where Cecil Taylor first heard that? – and the entire audience hops back about two inches. It’s almost deafening & brilliant in ways I’d never previously suspected, having only heard the piece recorded. It’s worth going to the show for this alone. The piece plays twice daily on weekdays, at 1 and 4 pm, and at 1 pm on weekends. The show runs through May 9.

The other news is that it is the only reason for attending the Dada Show, unless you have an interest in seeing examples of specific works gathered by their cities of production – a gallery for Zurich, another for Berlin, another for Paris, another for New York, one for Hanover, one for Cologne – an approach not unlike the Impressionism retrospective of a few decades back that broke everything down by salon so that you could see the painters thinking in their work. This one doesn’t work, because the examples in each gallery are too few, ultimately, and the city-by-city approach is ahistorical – you don’t get to see them thinking, save maybe for the large selection of George Grosz paintings. The real news is just how moribund this show proves to be. The great workers – Duchamp primarily – continue to look really great, and the little alcoves set aside for sound poetry are – next to the Antheil – the most exciting parts of the program, tho only a couple of recordings are new. Otherwise, this could be a retrospective of American poetry pre-Poe. There is no there here.