Akademia : Performing Life. Villa Vassilieff, Paris. Jan 12 - Mar 24, 2018


With : (-)auteur, Mercedes Azpilicueta (Pernod Ricard Fellow), Ieva Balode, Yaïr Barelli, Aia Bertrand, Raymond Duncan, Ieva Epnere, Barbara Gaile, Daiga Grantina, Myriam Lefkowitz, Mai-Thu Perret, Andrejs Strokins

Curators : Solvita Krese, Inga Lace & Camille Chenais


Akademia : Performing Life will look at narratives and themes springing from Akademia, a community and an alternative school established in the 1910s by Raymond Duncan, American dancer and artist, and since the 1920s co- run by Aia Bertrand, a dancer, writer and an expatriate from Latvia. 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.

This exhibition is coproduced with the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (Riga, Latvia).