Androgynous. Portrait of a Naked Dancer is a project by Lola Arias in collaboration with River Roux, a performer and pole dancer, who has navigated genders and spaces, challenging taboos through her artistic practice. Alongside Bishop Black and Dieter Rita Scholl, Roux retraces the steps of Anita Berber and other legendary figures of 1920s Berlin. Though Berber’s life was brief, her legacy endures: she transgressed norms through performances charged with gender ambiguity, eroticism, horror, and ecstasy. Yet her entanglement with Berlin’s counterculture is often reduced to scandal.

Travelling in time, mixing the stories of 1920’s artists with the lived experiences of today’s night performers, Androgynous. Portrait of a Naked Dancer explores the complex entanglements of resistance – foregrounding the role of counterculture in creating spaces of care, dissent, and collective survival in times of crisis.