Valeska Gert

Valeska Gert (1892–1978) was a German dancer, actress, cabaret performer, and artist whose grotesque, satirical, and physically extreme performance style made her a major figure in Weimar-era cultural life and a significant precursor of performance art and body art. Born in Berlin, she developed a distinctive performance practice in the 1910s and 1920s that incorporated industrial workers, prostitutes, death, and social types into brief but intense solo dance pieces.

Her work was characterized by an uncompromising physical commitment and a willingness to embody forms of social abjection and transgression rarely seen on stage.