“I can imagine Valeska Gert would have performed a grotesque, distorted satire about Donald Trump and his policies. She certainly would not have restrained herself,” says Lucia Ruprecht, a professor at the Institute for Theater Studies at Freie Universität. Ruprecht has been responsible for the Valeska Gert Visiting Professorship program since 2022. The professorship bears the name of a dancer, actress, and cabaret artist born in Berlin in 1892 and who died in Kampen on the island of Sylt in 1978. The Valeska Gert Visiting Professorship was initiated in 2006 by Ruprecht’s predecessor at the institute, Professor Gabriele Brandstetter. The university’s cooperation partners in this program are the Akademie der Künste and the Artists-in-Berlin Program of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

The visiting professor program invites a choreographer to Freie Universität Berlin for one semester at a time, where they then work with ten to fifteen students in a course in the Critical Dance Studies master’s degree program. It is the only course of its kind offered at a university in Germany. The choreographer and students work together in intensive seminars to create a performance that demonstrates their research, which can take on many different forms. Ruprecht emphasizes that this hands-on research is an important element of the degree program. She says, “We do not just sit in the classroom and read texts about dance and the history of dance. Instead, the students develop a project in the Dance Lab at the top of our building. An exciting aspect is that at the beginning, it is not at all clear how the project will turn out.” Ruprecht finds it particularly appealing that only a few of the students are trained dancers.

Gert’s Dance Satires Established a New Genre

Valeska Gert was one of the most innovative dancers of the historical avant-garde. Woven into her performances is her social criticism and rejection of conventions. Her dance satires established a new genre. It is almost paradoxical that Gert continues to have a significant role in dance studies. During her creative heyday in the 1920s, she was not one of the central figures in the expressionist dance movement of the time, such as Mary Wigman or Rudolf von Laban. Gert categorically rejected dancing in nature, the focus on abstract content, and the accompanying pathos embodied by Wigman and Laban, all of these being features that were prominent in their schools. Ruprecht notes that Gert was not interested in the expressionist aesthetic of the so-called “new human being.” In fact, she ridiculed it, and one of the reasons she remains so interesting today is that she was a lone wolf as an artist.

Valeska Gert developed her own unique style of dance, and she used her voice, both for speaking and singing. In her solo dances and pantomime studies, Gert often portrayed people on the margins of society in the Weimar Republic. She utilized her body, exploring its limitations and possibilities beyond the standards of beauty at the time. Ruprecht emphasizes, “Through her grotesque and provocative pantomimes and dances, she made dance history.” Not only that: From today’s perspective it is truly groundbreaking that Gert, who as a Jew fled the Nazis and went to the United States, already challenged gender stereotypes one hundred years ago, and thus became a pioneer of queer and feminist culture. As Ruprecht puts it, “Valeska Gert’s relevance continued to develop posthumously.”

“The Living Book” with Eszter Salamon

The Hungarian-French choreographer, filmmaker, and performer Eszter Salamon, who like Gert works across artistic borders, was appointed the thirty-sixth Valeska Gert Visiting Professor. Ruprecht points out, “Salamon’s work is the most significant contemporary engagement with the grotesque aesthetic of Valeska Gert.” Salamon has called her upcoming work with the students The Living Book. She plans to base her work with the students on Gert’s autobiography Ich bin eine Hexe: Kaleidoskop meines Lebens [I Am a Witch: Kaleidoscope of My Life], published in 1968. The semester program will be presented in a public event on June 8 at 7:00 p.m., in the Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz. A month later, on July 8, the participants of the class will give a public presentation of the results of their artistic and scholarly engagement with Gert’s work also at Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz.

Ruprecht emphasizes that it is crucial for the university and the advisory board of the visiting professorship to continue to attract outstanding choreographers such as nora chipaumire, Deborah Hay, Koffi Kôkô, Xavier Le Roy, and Meg Stuart so that this unique artistic and scholarly work can proceed.

Students from More Than Ten Countries

Ruprecht notes that the students currently enrolled in the English-language master’s degree program come from more than ten different countries. The Critical Dance Studies master’s degree program has been offered in its current shape since October 2024, and its content has been closely intertwined with the visiting professorship since it was established. The program’s graduates have gone on to enjoy a wide range of careers: they work in journalism and publishing, including in editorial departments for dance and art; they hold positions as dance dramaturges at production companies and theaters, both in Germany and abroad; they work in production and project management; they have positions in cultural policy networks and institutions; and they work in academia.

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The original German version of this article appeared in the Tagesspiegel newspaper supplement published by Freie Universität Berlin.