Anita Berber. »Orchideen«

The dancer Anita Berber is considered the ideal symbol of the infamous 1920s in Berlin. She was known for her excessive alcohol and drug consumption as well as for her ecstatic nude dance performances. She died in poverty in Berlin-Kreuzberg at the age of twenty nine.

The presentation “Orchideen” (Orchids) in the permanent collection rooms shows what is often obscured by the dancer’s image, which is typically reduced to eroticism and intoxication: her pioneering impact on modern dance as a choreographer, anticipating today’s performance art. Or her lyrical work, in which Anita Berber expresses herself with both sensitivity and melancholy about gender and sexuality—as in the eponymous poem “Orchids” from 1923.