Birgit Åkesson

Birgit Åkesson trained as a dancer at Mary Wigman's school in Dresden from 1929 to 1931.

In 1934 she made her debut with her very own choreography at the Comédie-Française in Paris, but her real breakthrough came only in 1951, when she performed two solos, one in complete silence.

She mainly created ballets, but also dance scenes in the opera Aniara, where Åkesson's role in the 1959 set are among the most famous.

Åkesson wanted to find the real essence of dance and its roots, which brought her to Africa.

After Åkesson's death, her collection of dance masks was donated to the Museum of Ethnography, Sweden, whom subsequently had a show of them in 2008.