Valeska Gert Labor

Directing students from the Otto Falckenberg School, pupils from the Iwanson dance studio in Munich and students from the stage and costume design class at the Academy of Fine Arts are collaborating to create miniatures inspired by the eccentric, avant-garde dancer and dance-mime-artist Valeska Gert who is also the inspiration for Marie Schleef’s production, “(Münchner) Verkehr”.

In 1917, Valeska Gert played the role of Käthchen in Otto Falckenberg’s legendary German production of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” (“Wie es euch gefällt”) at the Münchner Kammerspiele. Her avant-garde dance style was classified as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis and, in 1933, she fled first to England and subsequently to the US.