i_am_lotte_berk
Chocolate, morphine, sleeping pills and sex aren’t the usual words you’d associate with your great grandmother, but mine, Lotte Berk, was an unusual woman. She used to terrify and fascinate me when I visited her as child. As a young adult, I wanted to be her. This is my attempt to do that, so many years later.
Lotte Berk grew up in Germany to Jewish parents. She trained under the Mary Wigman school of dance and became a successful contemporary dancer, touring Germany with her Husband, Ernest. Then the Nazis came. Forced off stage by the SS, performing became impossible and they were forced to flee Germany to the UK. There, she devised a ground-breaking exercise technique, the Lotte Berk Method, still practised worldwide today, now known as Barre.
Lotte seduced everyone she met. A lot of the time, into bed. She had an open marriage and was fluid with her sexuality. She existed through flirting and sex. She was strong and powerful and alluring and everyone wanted to get to know her.
Having escaped the Nazis in the 30s, Lotte always carried an air of defiance and untouchability. Her red lipstick and kohl eyes a direct response to the Nazi ideals of pure women. She exuded the Weimar attitude of pre-war Germany.
The work I have created, i_am_lotte_berk, is a blend of her sexuality, desire, success and somewhat unhinged relationship with the world. It’s a combination of homage and parody, authenticity and falseness, modernity and nostalgia. Instagram was the natural choice to present Lotte in all her multifaceted glory: a permanent yet instant tribute to Lotte Berk. My great grandmother.
It’s the performance that the Nazis denied her.
