Ernest Berk (12 October 1909 – 30 September 1993) was a dancer, modern dance choreographer and composer of electronic music. He left Nazi Germany in 1934 to live and work for most of his career in the UK, returning to

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

in the 1980s.

Early life and education

Born in

Koln KOLN (channel 10) and KGIN (channel 11) are television stations licensed respectively to Lincoln and Grand Island, Nebraska, United States, serving as the CBS affiliates for southeastern and central Nebraska. Owned by Gray Media and jointly b ...

, Germany, Berk received his musical education from the Rheinische Musikschule, and was taught dance by

Mary Wigman Mary Wigman (born Karoline Sophie Marie Wiegmann; 13 November 1886 – 18 September 1973) was a German dancer and choreographer who pioneered expressionist dance, dance therapy, and movement training without pointe shoes. She is considered on ...

and the Brazilian dancer Chinita Ullmann. While in Germany, he ran his own dance company and produced a ballet for

Max Reinhardt Max Reinhardt (; born Maximilian Goldmann; 9 September 1873 – 30 October 1943) was an Austrian-born Theatre director, theatre and film director, theater manager, intendant, and theatrical producer. With his radically innovative and avant-gard ...

at the

Salzburg Festival The Salzburg Festival () is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer, for five weeks starting in late July, in Salzburg, Austria, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart's operas are a focus of ...

. Escaping Nazi Germany with his wife Lotte after they were banned from performing, he settled in the UK in 1934.

Dancer and choreographer

From 1935, Berk produced ballets for the Glyndebourne Festivals, for

Covent Garden Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist sit ...

and for the West End theatre. During this period he founded the Modern Dance Group in London and produced ''Buddha the Enlightened'', a ballet commissioned by the poet

John Masefield John Edward Masefield (; 1 June 1878 – 12 May 1967) was an English poet and writer. He was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate from 1930 until his death in 1967, during which time he lived at Burcot, Oxfordshire, near Abingdon ...

. With composer (and fellow émigré) Peter Ury Berk collaborated on several ballets, including ''The Family Suite'' (1949).Ernest Berk Collection, Laban Archive
Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance ''Sakuntala'', a ballet in Indian style, was staged at the

Adelphi Theatre The Adelphi Theatre is a West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster, central London. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receiv ...

in April 1946, set to classical Indian music chosen by V. K. Narayana Menon. In 1947, Berk was choreographer for the

Edinburgh International Festival The Edinburgh International Festival is an annual arts festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, spread over the final three weeks in August. Notable figures from the international world of music (especially european classical music, classical music) and ...

, its first year. With Nesta Brooking (1906–2006, owner of the Brooking School of Dance), he created the Dance Theatre company, whose ballet ''Trilustrum'' (1947) combined elements of the ballet with modern dance and won a special award at the Choreographic Competition in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

Composer

He became interested in electronic music, producing

musique concrète Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic ...

from a home studio he established in Camden in 1955. His first piece for magnetic tape was ''End of the World'' (1957), one of the first electronic works composed in England. His music was often used to accompany his own expressionist dance works, but he soon also began producing electronic soundtracks for theatre, television (such as the 1963

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

drama ''A Little Bit Of Gold Said "Jump"'') and film. In 1968, his work was presented at two pioneering London electronic music concerts – at the

Queen Elizabeth Hall The Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) is a music venue on the South Bank in London, England, that hosts European classical music, classical, jazz, and avant-garde music, talks and dance performances. It was opened in 1967, with a concert conducted by ...

on 15 January 1968, and later at the

Planetarium A planetarium (: planetariums or planetaria) is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation. A dominant feature of most planetariums is ...

– alongside the music of other early electronic music contemporaries in the UK, such as

Peter Zinovieff Peter Zinovieff (26 January 1933 – 23 June 2021) was a British composer, musician and inventor. In the late 1960s, his company, Electronic Music Studios (EMS), made the VCS3, a synthesizer used by many early progressive rock bands such as Pi ...

, Brian Dennis, Hugh Davies,

Delia Derbyshire Delia Ann Derbyshire (5 May 1937 – 3 July 2001) was an English musician and composer of electronic music. She carried out notable work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s, including her electronic arrangement of the theme ...

Tristram Cary Tristram Ogilvie Cary, OAM (14 May 192524 April 2008), was a pioneering English-Australian composer. He was also active as a teacher and music critic. Career Cary was born in Oxford, England, and educated at the Dragon School in Oxford and W ...

Daphne Oram Daphne Blake Oram (31 December 1925 – 5 January 2003) was a British composer and electronic musician. She was one of the first British composers to produce electronic sound, and was an early practitioner of ''musique concrète'' in the UK. As ...

and

George Newson George Newson (27 July 1932 – 8 March 2024) was an English composer and pianist who made important contributions to British electronic and avant garde music during the 1960s and 1970s. He subsequently composed large and small-scale works in many ...

. In 1970, he established a new studio at 52 Dorset Street, London W1. More than 200 electronic pieces emerged between 1957 and 1984. Two ballet soundtracks (''Initiation'' and ''Gemini'') were issued on a private record in 1970 and later commercially released by

Trunk Records Trunk Records is a British independent record label, which specialises mainly in lost film scores, unreleased TV music, library music, old advertising jingles, art, sexploitation and kitsch releases. It was founded in 1995 by Jonny Trunk, and ...

in 2019. Huddersfield Contemporary Records issued a double CD of his music, ''Diversed Tapes'', in 2024.

Influences

As well as dancing and choreography, Berk was skilled as a mime artist and percussionist. His choreography was influenced by the

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

expressionist school, and the subject matter of his ballets were shaped by his left-wing politics. His music shows his awareness of the folk traditions of India and China. Berk amassed a large collection of folk percussion instruments from those continents. There were collaborations with other experimental artists, such as pianist

John Tilbury John Tilbury (born 1 February 1936) is a British pianist. He is considered one of the foremost interpreters of Morton Feldman's music, and since 1980 has been a member of the free improvisation group AMM. Early life and education Tilbury s ...

, composer

Basil Kirchin Basil Kirchin (8 August 1927 – 18 June 2005) was an English drummer and composer. His career spanned from playing drums in his father's big band at the age of 13, through scoring films, to electronic music featuring tape manipulation of the ...

, visual artist John Latham, and filmmaker

David Gladwell David Gladwell (born 1935) is a British film editor, film editor, film director, director and artist. His most notable films as editor include ''If....'' (1968) and ''O Lucky Man!'' (1973) both by director Lindsay Anderson. In 1981, Gladwell d ...

Later life and return to Germany

In 1933, Berk married the dancer Liselotte Heymansohn (

Lotte Berk Lieselotte "Lotte" Berk (13 January 1913 – 4 November 2003) was a German-born dancer and teacher, who lived in England from 1938. In 1959, she developed her own method of exercise, drawing on ballet moves and positions, that concentrated on the ...

), with whom he often collaborated, and there was a daughter, Esther. They separated in the 1960s, and Lotte Berk went on to develop methods of exercise that attracted celebrity interest from

Britt Ekland Britt Ekland (born Britt-Marie Eklund; 6 October 1942) is a Swedish actress. She appeared in numerous films in her heyday throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including roles in ''The Double Man (1967 film), The Double Man'' (1967), ''The Night They ...

Barbra Streisand Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand ( ; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, songwriter, producer, and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success across multiple fields of entertainment, being the ...

and

Joan Collins Dame Joan Henrietta Collins (born 23 May 1933) is an English actress, author and columnist. She is the recipient of several accolades, including a Golden Globe Awards, a People's Choice Award, two Soap Opera Digest Awards and a Primetime Emm ...

. In 1965, Berk married a second time, this time to another dancer, Ailsa Park, nearly 40 years his junior.'Ernest Berk: Diversed' by Ian Helliwell
in ''

The Wire ''The Wire'' is an American Crime fiction, crime Drama (film and television), drama television series created and primarily written by the American author and former police reporter David Simon for the cable network HBO. The series premiered o ...

'', Issue 380, 1 October 2015. Together they formed the Dance Theatre Commune in 1970, and taught at the

Guildhall School of Music and Drama The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a music school, music and drama school located in the City of London, England. Established in 1880, the school offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in all aspects of classical music and jazz al ...

and at the Stanhope Institute for adult education. Returning to Germany in the mid-1980s, Berk taught music therapy and improvisation in Berlin at

Hochschule der Künste The Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK; also known in English as the Berlin University of the Arts), situated in Berlin, Germany, is the second largest art school in Europe. It is a public art and design school, and one of the four research uni ...

.''Ernest Berk - The Complete Expressionist''
Numeridanse. Much of his archive – gifted to the Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln – was destroyed in 2009 after a building collapse.Biography
Trunk Records.

References

External links

Group Dance N.01 (Boschesque - 1966)

''Diversed Mind'' (op.109)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Berk, Ernest 1909 births 1993 deaths English choreographers English electronic musicians English experimental musicians German choreographers German electronic musicians