Valeska Gert

Valeska Gert, born Gertrud Valesca Samosch on January 11, 1892, in Berlin, was a revolutionary German dancer, pantomime artist, and cabaret performer who became one of the most provocative and influential figures of the Weimar Republic's avant-garde scene. Coming from a Jewish family and showing early disdain for conventional academics or office work, she began dance training at age nine, later studying acting with Maria Moissi and dance with Rita Sacchetto, which led her toward a career in performance art. By 1916, she had created her first solo piece, Dance in Orange, which she performed at prominent Berlin venues including the Blüthnersaal and the UFA movie palace at Nollendorfplatz, often as part of mixed programs. Her work during World War I was deeply satirical and politically charged, creating what she called revolutionary satirical dance that critiqued bourgeois society, war, and traditional femininity, partly influenced by her family's financial hardships during the conflict. She gained significant recognition through her performances in expressionist plays such as Oskar Kokoschka's Hiob (1918), Ernst Toller's Transformation (1919), and Frank Wedekind's Franziska, establishing herself as a fearless artist who used her body to challenge societal norms with an anarchic intensity that aligned her with the Dadaist movement. In the 1920s, Gert pushed artistic boundaries even further with provocative works like Canaille (meaning prostitute), which included a simulated orgasm that caused outraged audiences to call the police, as well as pieces depicting traffic accidents, boxing matches, and death, all performed with grotesque, mocking, or furious energy. She developed her unique Tontänze (Sound Dances) starting in 1926, combining vocalizations, noises, and fragmented words with her movements and facial expressions, creating a multi-sensory performance style that analyzed and subverted societal conventions through physical expression. After being banned from the German stage in 1933 due to her Jewish heritage, she went into exile first in London, where she appeared in experimental film, and later in the United States, where she opened the famous Beggar's Bar in New York City in 1941, a bohemian establishment that employed future legends including Tennessee Williams, Julian Beck, Judith Malina, and Jackson Pollock. Following her return to Europe in 1947, she established several cabarets including Bei Valeska in Berlin and the legendary Ziegenstall (Goat Shed) on the island of Sylt, where she performed each summer until her death. She experienced a remarkable late-career film resurgence, appearing in Federico Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Rainer Werner Fassbinder's television series Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (1973), and Volker Schlöndorff's Coup de Grâce (1976), before her planned role as the real estate broker Knock in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu was tragically cut short by her death around March 16, 1978, at age 86, leaving behind a legacy as a pioneering performance artist who forever changed the relationship between dance, theater, and social commentary.