Guidelines of the Accademia Dimitri

To this day, the Academy has not lost the avant-garde and stimulating character that its founders Dimitri, Gunda and Richard Weber had passed on to it since 1975: the theatrical tradition lives alongside innovative practices, and at the heart of the teaching there is always the body and movement, declined in various forms and dimensions. The Academy continues to strive to offer an environment that fosters novelty, comparisons and lively exchanges, expanding and developing its educational offerings as well as numerous applied and basic research projects.

This development of the school and its various sectors is guided by three guidelines – Body and Movement, Culture, Diversity – that orient and inspire artistic creation, theoretical reflection and practical work developed within the Academy’s institutional sectors, in dialogue with external bodies and institutions, SUPSI, University Schools, Art Schools, Theatres and cultural venues, as well as with the territory, at regional, national and international level.

Body and Movement

Consistent with what was initiated by the school’s founders, the body and movement are at the heart of the Academy’s work: all of its sectors – training first and foremost, but also research and the services offered to the local area – operate and develop under the banner of Physical theatre.

At the Academy, the body is understood as a working tool; movement as a mode of expression and origin of artistic form and content. This pedagogical choice precisely positions the work of the school and in particular the training type. In a theatre that starts from the body, in which images and the visual have a significant weight, the student’s creation must necessarily interweave forms and content in a precise manner, which are conveyed according to organic and clear expressive choices.

If, for the purposes of the study, the Physical theatre approach is to be understood as a practice aimed at privileging artistic objectives, its characteristics also lend themselves to being profitably declined in different spheres, such as those of education, communication, health or social work, contexts in which the Academy, especially in its research projects and in the conception of experiences at the service of the territory, is particularly active.

Culture

In line with its pedagogical choice, over the years the Academy has developed its own distinctive approach based on the body component. In the conviction that direct and incorporated experience is capable of generating processes of understanding, reflection and transformation of content, through the body and movement – understood as means of expression but also of knowledge and creation – the Academy not only explores and communicates complex and topical issues to the public in addition to the more usual and playful themes.

The focus on an approach to experience and knowledge that passes through the body and movement allows us to question the meaning and position of the human body in a cultural and artistic sense, while at the same time problematising the normativity and binaries that tend to separate and hierarchise the body with respect to the mind, the emotional with respect to the rational, the masculine with respect to the feminine, and the disciplines of speech with respect to those of movement.

The Academy thus sustains a profound and necessary anchorage of art with the cultural and social issues that cross the contemporary world, also thanks to its interdisciplinary lines. The geographic location of the Academy and the origin of its students, lecturers and researchers further favour its role as a pole and crossroads of different traditions and cultural spheres, allowing for the integration of perspectives that in other contexts are not always able to enter into dialogue.

Diversity

The Academy is a school open to all, without discrimination of gender, background or culture, and works to ensure quality education – in basic training as well as in continuing or service training – in the ideal of lifelong learning.

With an awareness and sensitivity to gender and diversity issues, the Academy works on a daily basis with support activities aimed at fostering the well-being of the student body both within the school and with regard to the professional artistic context, also by producing specific accompanying measures, e.g. aimed at students coming from abroad or with a disability or with specific difficulties in their education.

In a broader context, the Academy has long been active in the development of training, research or creative projects that integrate issues related to inclusion and diversity. With the aim of building collaborations capable of enhancing the qualities and knowledge of each individual within a common path towards shared goals, the Academy, always basing itself on the Physical theatre approach, identifies reference points and develops modes of action capable of building processes that enable the participation of people with different physical, cognitive and social functioning.

Personality protection

In the desire to guarantee the indispensable physical and emotional safety of the school’s employees, as well as the students, and at the same time to preserve the ambition of a pedagogy capable of taking risks in order to live up to its transformative vocation, the Dimitri Academy is committed to promoting appropriate and effective measures of prevention and action, and a culture of communication based on mutual respect and consideration.

Principles and objectives

The Academy is committed to respecting and protecting the personality and health of employees and students, in particular by ensuring that no one suffers harassment or other personality-damaging behaviour. Any violation of personal integrity compromises an individual’s wellbeing and health and is in no way tolerated.

The College is committed to protecting, safeguarding and supporting employees and students from any form of discrimination related to gender identity, age, culture, ability, disability and sexual orientation, as well as from bullying and psychological and/or sexual harassment (whether verbal, non-verbal and/or physical).

In line with these principles and objectives, the DTA puts in place preventive and informative measures and actions, and establishes processes to be followed in the event of personality-damaging actions occurring. These processes are set out in regulations, which describe the possible procedures to be followed in the event that an employee or student feels or witnesses discrimination, bullying or harassment.