Exhibition ‘Akademia: Performing Life’ at Villa Vassilieff, Paris

The exhi­bi­tion “Akademia: Performing Life” will look at nar­ra­tives and themes springing from Akademia, a community and an alter­na­tive school that offered courses in dance, art and crafts, hosted an art gallery and a publishing house and staged the­atre and dance pieces between the 1910s and 1970s in Paris. Established by Raymond Duncan, American dancer and artist, and since the 1920s co- run by Aia Bertrand, a dancer, writer and an expa­triate from Latvia, the Akademia was a man­i­fes­ta­tion of their ide­o­log­ical syn­cretism blending socialist prin­ci­ples, the desire to revive ancient Greece and a “nat­ural” Latvian way of life. The exhi­bi­tion aims to explore the ideas and prin­ci­ples embodied by Akademia at its incep­tion as poten­tial alter­na­tives to tra­di­tional models of edu­ca­tion, cre­ation and com­mu­nity life, while also ques­tioning its more obscure aspects.