Lecture in German language.

Amid Valeska Gert’s grotesquely danced diagnoses of our times, one dance stands out that seems to break with her laconic formal language: the dance Death, which, while profaning contemporary traditions of Totenkult, simultaneously interrupts Gert’s aesthetic of interruption. The lecture asks what other perspective on death opens up here: to what extent the dance rebels against death, and in doing so touches upon the very boundary of dance. Within it survives a utopian moment that speculates on the abolition of death—and the fact that we must die then seems to be the truly grotesque moment.

Felix Stenger studied theater studies, philosophy, and modern German literature at Freie Universität Berlin. In 2025, he earned his doctorate there with a dissertation on Susanne Kennedy and The Agency (“Enjoy Alienation. Entfremdungsgestaltung bei Susanne Kennedy und The Agency,” forthcoming from Passagen Wien). He is currently preparing a research project on the aesthetic grammar of the New Right.

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.