Beautifully Grotesque: the ugly beauty in the dances of Valeska Gert and Josephine Baker

"Only one kind of ugliness can be represented in conformity with nature without destroying all aesthetic pleasure, and therefore artistic beauty: that which arouses disgust" -Immanuel Kant from Umberto Eco's On Beauty

In the early 1920's there were two dance artists significantly pushing the limits of what female performers could do on stage. Breaking new ground with dances that not only entertained, but provoked and subverted the performing arts genre. They were Valeska Gert and Josephine Baker, contemporaries in their field, though I'm not sure they knew each other, but perhaps knew of each other. I would love to discover a connection if one exists! Josephine Baker is perhaps more well known than Valeska Gert, as she had more widely recognized commercial success. But both were two of the most daring female dancers on the European scene during the roaring 20's. I'll be taking a look at two of their most famous solos in the interest of connecting them as artists defying the standard aesthetics of beauty in performance and entering the space of the grotesque. Ramsey Burt's 1998 book Alien Bodies: representations of modernity, 'race' and nation in early modern dance, will be my main resource and reference for this blog, as it provides detailed examples of both of the dances I want to discuss. Valeska Gert's Canaille and Josephine Baker's Banana Dance.

In the early 1920's in Weimar Germany, Valeska Gert was making a name for herself as a dancer, actor and performer of the grotesque genre, a genre that I would argue she helped pioneer with regards to the performing arts. Many of her dances' subject matters had to do with the degenerates of society, such as prostitutes, procuresses and other underdogs. Valeska stated that 'Since I didn't like the bourgeois, I danced these people dismissed by them'. (Burt, 1998: 50) Definitely interested in the shock value aspect of performing these types of characters in her dances, Ramsey Burt comments that she did so 'as an act of defiance in order to draw attention to aspects of feminine experience that were generally hidden and ignored'. (50)

After the first World War the German economy collapsed into chaos with extreme inflation, job loss, and a surplus of wounded veterans from a lost war. Selling of one's body became a common way to earn money for many of the least fortunate. Prostitution became synonymous with Berlin nightlife and Gert portrayed this with her dance Canaille. Wearing a black dress with a red collar and dark stockings, she performed as the prostitute, re-enacting a typical scene of 'attracting a customer, having sex with him and then afterwards either acting satisfied, dissatisfied or angry with him'. (Burt, 1998: 51) Re-enacting sex on the stage was just one of the grotesque aspects of Gert's performance, in some versions she would also 'have an orgasm' on stage, in which one of these performances the police were called as it was considered an indecent act. Ironic however, as these indecent acts were most likely being done underground by the wealthy patrons in attendance, 'attacking bourgeois sexual hypocrisy'. (Burt, 1998: 53) Grotesque and subversive indeed!

It is worth noting that I have direct experience with this dance as I've performed a solo show about Valeska Gert and done my own version of Canaille. Endeavoring to do Valeska and her dance justice, I put myself in this grotesque space, sometimes slinking, sometimes cackling, being suggestive in a most brazen way, for Valeska's 'aim was to shock rather than titillate'. (Burt, 1998: 51) And honestly, it's quite an emotional roller coaster to play Gert's prostitute as she played her with different emotions each time, sometimes happy, sometimes angry or indifferent. Keeping her raw, real and fresh.

Josephine Baker was a dancer and singer who came to be a renowned stage performer when she went to Paris in the 1920's to perform as part of Rolf de Maré's Revue Negre. (Burt, 1998) She was already an experienced performer by the time she went to Europe, as she had been performing from a young age on the vaudeville circuit and then in two major all black Broadway musicals in New York City. (Burt, 1998) She already had this unique, stand-out, scene stealing quality in her performances back in New York where she would dance at the end of the chorus line 'mugging' (Burt, 1998: 66) making funny faces and improvising the steps, not afraid to be the ridiculous clown. But in Paris she was given opportunities to really shine and command the stage on her own. Such as in the famous Banana Dance.

Wearing (usually) nothing but a girdle or tutu if you will, of bananas placed in such a way that they stuck straight out from her hips and waist, Baker would dance around with wild 'Africanist' abandon, shaking her butt and hips making the bananas quiver almost independently of her, creating a sensational spectacle of the 'savage' for the Parisian elite. Doing her 'mugging' from previous performances, crossing her eyes and integrating new jazz steps like the Charleston, in which she is credited to have introduced to Paris. (Burt, 1998) This dance was responsible for turning Josephine into a star, even though there was conflict amongst Parisian audiences as Burt says, 'the pleasure and disgust that her racial difference evoked...was undoubtedly a key factor in the success of the Revue Nègre'. (81)

A big difference between these artists is that for Valeska, she was producing content that was unexpected and unwanted by many audience goers, but for Josephine, she was able to capitalize on something that there was already an appetite for. It definitely speaks to the times of early 20th century 'instability, ambiguity and contradiction'. (Burt, 1998: 81) And how society was rapidly modernizing and changing its collective understanding of beauty and entertainment. Whether people liked it or not, Valeska and Josephine were there to subvert and assist in these changes.