WORKSHOP | When Presence Becomes Alive • Awakening the Front, Middle and Back Body (taught by Adalisa Mengini)

Exploring Movement, Awareness, and New Possibilities through Feldenkrais, Ideokinesis, and Neuroscience

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Movement reveals how we inhabit our bodies, how we meet gravity, and how we come into relation with the space around us.

In dance, movement and other somatic practices, the front, middle, and back body describe different ways of organizing presence and energy in movement.

The front body meets the world. Breath, perception, and expression unfold here, where the body opens and communicates.

The back body supports and carries us through space. Quiet and powerful, it offers direction, continuity, and the strength that allows movement to travel.

Between them, the middle body gathers and connects. Through the spine, the breath, and the deep center of the body, movement finds coherence and flow.

As these dimensions begin to cooperate, effort redistributes and movement becomes more available. Presence deepens, and new possibilities of balance, freedom, and expression emerge.

Drawing on Feldenkrais, Ideokinesis, and neurophysiology, this seminar explores these relationships through gentle movement investigations and dance.

Working alone, in pairs, and in groups, participants will explore new ways of sensing, moving, and connecting, with themselves, with others, and with the living intelligence of the body.

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About

Adalisa Menghini (IT/DE)

Performer · Choreographer · Movement Educator

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Adalisa Menghini is a multidisciplinary artist with over forty years of international experience in dance, performance, and somatic education. She studied at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam, trained in embryology with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, and is a certified Feldenkrais practitioner. She also holds a Master’s degree in Neurophysiological Psychology, integrating scientific knowledge with body-based, experiential practices.

Her artistic work spans improvisation, choreography, and somatic research, with a strong commitment to inclusive, intergenerational, and socially engaged approaches. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with renowned artists such as Dieter Heitkamp, Nita Little, Keith Hennessy, Kirstie Simson, LaborGras, Tino Sehgal, and Sasha Waltz.

In parallel, she has developed her own pieces involving both professional and non-professional participants, including children and elderly people, with a focus on accessibility, presence, and collective creation.

She has been involved in several long-term artistic collaborations, including with the now-closed collective Teatro Instabile Berlin, contributing to projects that combined artistic research and community-based performance. Her choreographic work has twice been awarded for best direction and choreography in the context of Giocabriga, a genre of popular theatre in Italy.

In collaboration with K. Wickenhäuser, Adalisa has created museum-based performances with school children at Berliner institutions such as Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlinische Galerie, and Museum für Kommunikation. These educational art projects were honored twice with the “Kinder zum Olymp” award.

Adalisa is a regular faculty member at Tanzfabrik Berlin, where she has been teaching for many years, and is also a lecturer in both the Bachelor and Master programs in Theatre Pedagogy at the University of the Arts (UdK) Berlin. She regularly leads international workshops in contact improvisation and composition.

She is a faculty member of C.A.R.E. (Creativity–Attachment–Resilience–Education), a somatic training program based at the Somatische Akademie Berlin, which combines movement, neuroscience, and creative processes to support personal and professional development.

In 2025, Adalisa was invited to teach at the ISPSO Annual Meeting (International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations) in Amsterdam, bringing her somatic movement approach into dialogue with organizational and psychoanalytic thinking.