Marx Brothers
on Horseback Salad

In 1937, Salvador Dali, a fan of the Marx Brothers, wrote for them a screenplay entitled “Giraffes on Horseback Salad.” The screenplay, long since lost, never made it to production, but the idea of it did find its way to newly-formed ERS. Then in its first year as an ensemble, the company researched the lost script and watched every Marx Brothers film they could find. Marx Brothers on Horseback Salad is the result of ERS’s attempt to reconstruct the screenplay and imagine the relationship between Dali and the famous veterans of vaudeville and screen. The piece featured a multi-armed Groucho, a harp strung with barbed wire and a strange silent trio of “the greatest aviators in the world.” In between recreating images and scenes from Dali’s script, ERS staged its imaginings of awkward domestic encounters between Harpo and his wife and Dali and his glamorous muse, Gala.

The group’s second piece and its first under the ERS moniker, Marx Brothers featured some of the group’s first forays into what would become its signature choreographic style.