PLACEBO DANCES

Open for everyone
Date: 29 November 2026
Time: 19:30
Duration: 3h
Location: Amalgam Studio, Hamra

The workshop is facilitated by Flavia Zaganelli together with Maria Durbà.

Placebo Dances workshop is an open space for dance experimentation, accessible to everyone, without limits of gender, age, ability, or experience. No dance or theatre training is required—only a willingness to move and share the experience.

Wear comfortable clothes. You may sweat a little. Barefoot, socks, or clean trainers are welcome. No homophobia, no transphobia, no misogyny, no racism, no ableism, no fatphobia.

Placebo Dances is a space of investigation around pleasure. It is a place for the relationships reconfiguration. It is a tendency, an inclination, an unbalancing towards a condition of openness, connection and enchantment, which can foster pleasure at oneself and others, and question the positioning of our bodies in the world. In Placebo Dances we seek for postures that are shaken by desire, that gently disrupt the body and make it waver, to find an erotic closeness of our being in the world. Pleasure as salvation in times of catastrophe.

A journey into movement as a form of awareness, connection, and transformation

Placebo Dances is, first of all, a space which is both material and immaterial. The place of an encounter – between three performers, and between them and a certain number of spectators and visitors – and also the space, first and foremost imaginative and potential, of an inquiry into and around pleasure, into its relationship with the body, the skin, being together with others, and also being alone, together with others. 
A striated space, unfolding in the continuous time of artistic research, which first of all constitutes itself as a practice, and specifically as a practice of care of the self. A practice, in the sense of a doing that repeats itself, gives substance to days and to one’s way of being in the world.
A practice of care of the self, à la Foucault, in the sense of a doing that has no object except its own becoming, and no subject except a self that, through the practice, is not only rethought and constituted, but also invented: an emerging subjectivity that has less to do with a specific personal identity than with the possibility of becoming a subject, both individually and collectively. 

Pleasure is, for this practice, both its object and its horizon. An object of inquiry, a sensation explored and sought through the body, its movements, its relationship with music and with the various textures of the physical space; and also a horizon toward which the body positions itself, becoming a vector and a moving line, a vehicle for sensations and perceptions, and a surface through which other subjectivities, those who watch, also enter into relation with the possibility of pleasure.
The form this practice takes, the form that pleasure creates, is that of a dance, or rather of a series of dances. An open series, not defined a priori, not measurable. Not one dance but dances: plural as bodies are plural, and plural because multiple, uncountable, not destined to be exhausted or to end.

Placebo Dances thus opens the space – both the material one of practice and encounter, and the imaginative one of what exists as potential – to the shared practice of joyful passions, and reaffirms a fundamental trait of dance: its being a practice of emancipation, of self-invention, of weaving collective dimensions in which new perceptions and different sensations take form.

About the instructors

Flavia Zaganelli (she/her) is a dance artist and performer. She trained independently, collaborating with international artists across Italy and Europe, and later graduated from Tanzfabrik Berlin and Smash#9. Her research is multidisciplinary, focusing on hybrid forms, collaborative processes, and the body as a root of somatic perception and an agent of change. Dance and performance are her tools to explore relationships and embody ideas about the future. Her works—including The Game We Play, INVISIBILIA (2021), and electrica/ecosi’stɛma/ (2023)—have been presented in theaters and festivals across Italy. In 2024, she is shortlisted for FONDO, an Italian network supporting emerging creativity. Placebo Dances, her investigation into the erotic and sensual potential of the body, premiered at Santarcangelo Festival 2025, was selected for Boarding Pass Plus Dance 2023, and supported by Santarcangelo Festival, Moving in November, Graner, Dom Utopii, and Lavanderia a Vapore. Flavia regularly facilitates spaces for artistic and somatic exploration, and she is a Dance Well and Pilates teacher. Since December 2023, she co-founded and co-curates the activities of Bologna for Palestine.

María Durbá (1995) is a dancer, choreographer, and performer from Madrid, currently based in Florence. With a diverse background centered on the body, she began her training at the age of five with classical dance, later moving toward physical theatre and contemporary dance. She graduated in 2017 from the Royal School of Dramatic Art (RESAD), where she studied voice, acrobatics, mask work, and physical expression. She has worked as both an actress and dancer with various institutions and choreographers. She later moved to Brussels to continue her development as a dancer, where she began creating her own projects. She sees the role of the creator as that of a translator: starting from an idea, she seeks ways to translate it into movement or a stage image capable of engaging in dialogue with the audience. Her research is rooted in curiosity and a deep pleasure in movement.