(Lecture in English)

This lecture explores Gert’s time in America, from her disastrous 1936 appearance in New York City and her ruinous 1939 Hollywood run to her well-celebrated stint as both performer in and proprietress of her underground Greenwich Village venue, Beggar Bar (1941–1945). While in the United States, I argue that Gert’s economic options were greatly limited by dominant market prejudices against her gender nonconforming expressions of German/Jewish femininity and the ruptures they produced. She then exploited these gender contradictions, using dance to create new aesthetic worlds and social economies through both her performance works and performance bars.

Dr Jackie Davis is a scholar and educator at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Combining Dance Studies, Queer Theory, and German/Jewish History, Jackie’s research evaluates dance and the production of subversive body politics. Jackie holds BA degrees in Dance and History as well as an MA and a PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA.

This lecture is a part of the series Valeska Gert and her Afterlives. FU Berlin / AdK / DAAD: Celebrating 20 years of the Valeska Gert Professorship.