Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

A performance-poetry troupe named for anti-art opened a bar so their shows would always have a stage, and accidentally built a Deep Ellum institution. Club Dada at 2720 Elm Street in Dallas opened on 26 September 1986, founded by David Border, Tom Henvey and Doak Boettiger of Victor Dada - the absurdist performance ensemble that had spent years roaming bookstores, galleries and bathhouse cultural centres - with live music booked by scene fixture Jeff Liles. The name honoured the original Dada poets and painters, and the programming honoured the spirit: Monday Night Feedback turned down the sound on televised football so performers could improvise their own commentary, and Weird Wednesdays threw musicians and audiences into spontaneous collaborations. The club arrived at the exact moment Deep Ellum - the old warehouse and blues district east of downtown, where Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson had played in the 1920s - was roaring back to life alongside Theatre Gallery, the Prophet Bar and Club Clearview. Dada doubled as art space and rock room, and its most famous export came fast: the New Bohemians, fronted by Edie Brickell, worked out the songs on its stage that carried them to international success. Performance art stayed in the mix for years, from rubber-stamp conceptual pieces to multi-media Flea Circus nights. The venue closed in 2003 as the neighbourhood cycled through one of its down periods, then reopened several years later under new ownership with the music pushed to the front - indie, rock, hip-hop, country and everything the district books - and what is claimed as the biggest patio in Deep Ellum stretched out back, an open-air second stage under the Dallas skyline. Nearing four decades on Elm Street, now operating as part of the Mullen and Mullen Music Project, Club Dada remains one of the anchors of America's most storied walkable music district - a bar built by artists that never entirely stopped being an artwork itself.