Vali Myers Dancing in a Jazz Club, Paris, 1950

When people asked Val Myers what her ambition was, she laughed. “Why must everybody have a set ambition?” She asked. “I merely want to live, to dance, to get as much out of life as possible, to experience as many things and feel as many feelings as possible. I’m not like the other girls. I don’t expect anything from life, or from anybody, for that matter. That is really my whole philosophy. Older people can’t grasp this. But they can’t expect much more from young people today because the whole world is unsettled and the future so uncertain.”

Vali never danced in a professional stage show. She preferred the tiny square-footage cleared for her in little clubs such as l’Escale on the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, or the Rose Rouge; on Saturday she would invariably turn up at the vast ballroom of the Bal Nègre on the Rue Blomet—there to dance hour after hour with the Senegalese, dancers from the Cameroons, from Martinique, taking them on one after the other and leaving them staggered with exhaustion.

Her dancing is remarkable – a sinuous shuffling, bent-kneed, her shoulders and hands moving at trembling speed to the drumbeats. She wears blue jeans, a man’s shirt pulled in at the waist by a wide black belt, and worn red ballet slippers that she often kicks off to dance in flat-splayed bare feet. Her audience, almost always men, stare at her rather than watch.

A friend explains it as follows: “I watched her dance and I never heard the music. I said to her ‘Man, how can you dance like that? You must be a missing link.’ And that was it. Like I guess Kiki of Montparnasse was for those people in the twenties, Vali was the same for us. You saw in her the personalization of something torn and loose and deep-down primitive in all of us—and, Man, you could see it moving right around in front of you in ballet slippers and a man’s shirt.”

Vali Myers (August 2, 1930 – February 12, 2003) was an Australian artist, dancer, and bohemian icon — famous for her intense, otherworldly artworks and her equally intense, free-spirited life.

Born in Sydney, she grew up in a strict environment but quickly broke away, moving to Melbourne as a teenager, where she became a professional modern dancer. Seeking a wider stage, she left Australia in the late 1940s for Europe, eventually settling in Paris.

In Paris during the 1950s, Vali lived in extreme poverty but became a magnetic figure on the Left Bank. Her wild red hair, heavily lined eyes, tattoos, and fierce independence set her apart — she was like a living artwork herself. She became a muse and friend to major artists and writers like Jean Cocteau, Jean Genet, Tennessee Williams, and Ed van der Elsken. However, she wasn’t just a muse: she was a serious artist. Her intricate ink drawings and paintings, filled with fantastical creatures, spiritual symbolism, and dreamlike landscapes, gained her critical acclaim later in life.

After Paris, she lived for many years in a remote valley near Positano, Italy, where she rehabilitated wild animals and continued her art in almost complete isolation. Later, she returned to Melbourne, Australia, continuing to create and exhibit art until her death.

(Photos by Ed van der Elsken, Paris 1950-54, from Love on the Left Bank)