Valeska Gert

Valeska Gert (11 January 1892 – c. 16 March 1978) was a German dancer, pantomime, cabaret artist, actress and pioneering performance artist.

Early life and career Gert was born as Gertrud Valesca Samosch in Berlin to a Jewish family. She was the eldest daughter of manufacturer Theodor Samosch and Augusta Rosenthal. Exhibiting no interest in academics or office work, This, combined with her love of ornate fashion, led her to a career in dance and performance art.

World War I had a negative effect on her father's finances, forcing her to rely on herself far more than other bourgeois daughters typically might.

Following engagements at the Deutsches Theater and the Tribüne in Berlin, Gert was invited to perform in expressionist plays in Dadaist mixed media art nights.

In the 1920s, Gert premiered one of her more provocative works, titled Canaille (meaning a prostitute). Also in the 1920s, Gert's other progressive performances included dancing a traffic accident, boxing, or dying. She was revolutionary and radical and never ceased to simultaneously shock and fascinate her audiences. When she danced Canaille with an orgasm in Berlin in 1922, the audience called the police.

During this time, she performed in the Schall und Rauch cabaret. Gert also launched a tour of her own dances, including titles like Dance in Orange, Boxing, Circus, Japanese Grotesque, Death, and Canaille. Their relationship lasted until 1938. From 1926 at the latest, on the stage she introduced new solo pieces she called Tontänze (Sound Dances), adding her voice - noises and words - to her movements, gestures and facial expressions. Valeska Gert analysed the limits of societal conventions and then expressed with her body the insights that she gained from her analyses. her second marriage. Tennessee Williams also worked for her for a short time as a busboy, but was fired for refusing to pool his tips. In February 1945, Gert had to close her Beggar's Bar despite its success, due to a lack of official permits.

Gert spent every summer in Provincetown until 1946, when she opened her new cabaret Valeska's there. Mitzka's video of Gert performing Baby and Death is also included in the video art collection Record Again! 40 Jahre Videokunst.de part 2.

Filmography

Silent 1918: Colomba (Germany, director: Arzén von Cserépy) 1925: Wood Love (Germany, director: Hans Neumann) - Puck 1925: Joyless Street (Germany, director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst) - Frau Greifer (uncredited) 1926: Nana (Germany / France, director: Jean Renoir after Émile Zola) - Zoe - la femme de chambre 1928: Alraune (Germany, director: Henrik Galeen, after Hanns Heinz Ewers) - Ein Mädchen von der Gasse 1929: Der Tod (Experimental film) (Germany, director: Carl Koch ("Totentanz", part of Brecht's The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent) 1929: Diary of a Lost Girl (Germany, director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst, nach Margarete Böhme) - The director's wife 1930: Such Is Life (Takový je život) (Germany / Czechoslovakia, director: ) - Waitress 1930: People on Sunday (Germany, director: Robert Siodmak, Rochus Gliese, Edgar G. Ulmer) - Herself

Sound films 1931: The Threepenny Opera (Germany, director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst) - Mrs. Peachum 1934: Pett and Pott (Short, United Kingdom, director: Alberto Cavalcanti) - The Maid 1939: Rio (United Kingdom, director: John Brahm) - Specialty (uncredited) 1965: Giulietta degli spiriti (Italy / France / West Germany, director: Federico Fellini) - Pijma 1966: La Bonne dame (France, Director: Pierre Philippe) 1973: Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (TV Series, Episode: "Franz und Ernst", West Germany, director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder) - Die andere Oma 1975: Die Betörung der blauen Matrosen (West Germany, director: Ulrike Ottinger) - Ein alter Vogel 1976: Coup de Grâce (West Germany / France, director: Volker Schlöndorff) - Tante Praskovia (final film role) 1977: Nur zum Spaß, nur zum Spiel – Kaleidoskop Valeska Gert (Documentary, West Germany, director: Volker Schlöndorff)

Awards 1970: Filmband in Gold for lifelong achievement in German film 2004: Honoured with a star on the Walk of Fame of Cabaret in Mainz