“Dança Imaginal® espaço de imaginaçao corpórea” is an artistic and choreographic research based in Lisbon. The idea of this project was born from the desire to build a space and time in which people can Imagine. Dance and movement, in this method, ease the imaginative work and the body becomes the place and simultaneously the instrument of access to that Beauty that, as the philosopher Heraclitus said, “loves to hide”.
The lab proposes an original synthesis inspired by different methods of contemporary dance and practices of embodiment: Authentic Movement, Fux creative method and De Vera D’Aragona symbolic method. The research is mostly dedicated to improvisation following an explorative path of expressive potentialities. Various creative stimuli, objects, paint, images and sensory experiences, open the imagination of the individual and the collective body.
About
“I do not mean that dreaming is a bridge, but rather that there is an operation we call imagination, which makes the heroic ego a more subtle body and capable of becoming a free soul” James Hillman
Maddalena Ugolini, dancer, choreographer, art dance movement therapist, founder and teacher of Dança Imaginal®. She was born in Florence in 1986. She started with ballet when she was three years old and later she met dance theatre and contemporary dance. After graduating in Clinical Psychology at the University of Florence, in 2010 she moved to the United States where she lived for two years, practicing dance and photography, with exhibitions in NYC and Los Angeles. In 2012, she enrolled in a four-year master’s degree at the Centro Toscano of Art and Dance-movement Therapy, where she specialised in the “Authentic Movement” method and mastered in 2017 with her thesis about Body Imagination. In January 2013, she met Deborah Lamantia and she deepened her choreographic research, dancing in her company “Brick”. In 2017 she moved to Lisbon, where founded her project of “Dança Imaginal, espaço de imaginaçao corpórea”. In September 2018 she was selected for the Advanced Program of Creation in Performing Arts (PACAP) at Forum Dança curated by Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz. In March, 2018 she presented her project at Festival Cumplicidade, International Contemporary Dance Festival of Lisboa. Her works “Corpo Azul” and “Take me somewhere nice” were presented last year at Galeria Vera Cortês, Lisbon. In December 2021 , InShadow Festival presented “Alba”, her new performance/living installation.
InShadow Festival 2023
Galeria de arquitetura Lisbon
Artistic Direction: Maddalena Ugolini
Performers: Grupo Imaginal
“O MUNDO ESTÁ EM OBRAS” Performance
InShadow Festival 2022
Caixa Economica Operaria
Artistic Direction Maddalena Ugolini
Performers: Grupo Imaginal
Videoinstallation and Light design : Fabio Baldo
Soundscape: Massimiliano Sarta
ALBA Performance/ living installation
InShadow Festival 2021
Livreria Ler Devagar, LX FactoryLisbon
Artistic Direction Maddalena Ugolini
Performers: Grupo Imaginal
Videoinstallation and Light design : Peppe Coniglio and Fabio Baldo
Soundscape: Timoteo Grignani
Alba is a gesture that falls into the world. It is a story carved by hand with clay that is born and dies constantly with it. Alba is the instant before birth, the word on the tip of your tongue, the moment before the jump, the life that appears in the infinite space between two bodies. Alba is a spacious passion, a compassion that lets things unfold, cares for, lightens, glimpses the iridescence, the glow, the dawn.
ALBA Short Documentary
InShadow Festival 2021
Galeria Santa Catarina Lisbon
“Connaître est co-naître”To know is to be born with, born together with what I see, to have an experience of the beginning of things, their continuous surge. Ilià is a place, a home to return to, an amorous encounter with nature, a movement of wonder, a fruitful gaze, an appointment with the sky. Ilià is Being-in-the-world, paradox and consolation.
TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE Performance/ videoinstallation
Things being as they were, I decided, like Palomar, to limit myself to look, keeping me close to what I could see and to the immediate ideas that things suggested in me.
“The greater part of the soul is outside the body.” (Sendivogius)
CORPO AZUL Interactive Performance/ installation
InShadow Festival 2019
Galeria OTOCO and Galeria Vera Cortez, Lisbon.
Concept /choreography: Maddalena Ugolini
Performers: Grupo Imaginal
“When myths say Gods have blue hair or blue bodies, they have. The Gods live in a blue place of metaphor” Corpo Azul is a living installation that invites the public to interact and play with a gesture that turns into a breathing matter, an organism that imagines.
INDIGENA Photo exhibition and Performance
April 2019 Galeria Arte Graça, Lisbon
Concept /choreography/ photography: Maddalena Ugolini
Performers: Grupo Imaginal
“You understand that you have in yourself flocks of oxen, flocks of sheep, and flocks of goats. You understand that there are also birds of the sky in you. You understand that you are another world in small, and that in you there are the sun, the moon, and even the stars “Origen lii century AD
The creation “Indigena” is inspired by the creative material which has been collected during the last year in a series of individual intensive sessions. The artist documented the deep imaginations of twenty participants by making portraits and pictures of their dance improvisations and recording their stories with audio archives.
“havia muita água. e havia a possibilidade de ficar sempre dentro da água. dava para respirar”Filipa aula individual 12.11.18
WORKSHOPS / INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS / RESIDENCIES
ARTISTIC RESIDENCIES
“Lugares” Diários de corpos e paisagens.
“LUGARES_diaries of bodies and landscapes” is a cycle of itinerant artistic residencies born in 2017 with the idea of investigating the relationship and coincidence between body and space, anatomy and geography. Here being-in-the-world allows us to open perception of the sensitive and therefore “fantastic” body.
We have been traveling and dancing together since 2017, our group of dancers, gardeners, philosophers, independent artists scattered throughout Europe, every summer meet to do research together, each time immersed in a different landscape. After getting lost in the cork groves of Alentejo, dancing naked in the church of Belmonte, after seeing the swans swinging on the cold waves of the Baltic Sea and shivering at the foot of Etna, this year we will witness sudden increases in splendor under the starry sky of UK. From 5 to 10 of July we will have the honor of being hosted in the former astronomical observatory of Bidstone, currently young and active Artistic Research Centre located in the countryside of Liverpool.
We are happy to invite you to COSMICA, the brightest dance residency in our solar system🪐
cosmica
july 5-10th 2024
bidston astronomical observatory, uk
The residence is a place of mutual care where not only movement but also writing, painting and sculpture are tools of creation and research. These are days of immersion in nature, where the breath relaxes and with it the imagination. After exploring the authentic movement of the individual and collective body, we work with improvisation. The workshop concludes with a site-specific performance in which the stage opens up to a horizontal dramaturgical action between humans, plants and minerals and multispecies real-time composition.
From the cycle #lugares, diários de corpos e paisagens. Limited places. Registration Early Birds till March 30th :maddalenaugolini@gmail.com.
LAVICA Lugares Photo Exhibition by Maddalena Ugolini 2023
ALBALugares Short Doc by Maddalena Ugolini and Peppe Coniglio 2021
ILIÁ Lugares Short Doc by Maddalena Ugolini and Peppe Coniglio 2020
WORKSHOPS
SALVIA
Suspended in the air effortlessly, everything contributes to its existence without needing to contract a single muscle. Green surface that opens up to the sky, the leaf is the paradigmatic form of openness, life capable of giving itself to the world breathing. Grasping the mystery of plants means remembering that we are climate, atmosphere, an infinite mixture of all things present, past and future.
Cycle of dance and movement workshops in our new dance space immersed in the nature of Pontassieve. For humans, plants, minerals, animals, adults and children.
AMSTERDAM: 5&6/4/24 anamorphic studio h14.00-18.00
Info&Res :maddalenaugolini@gmail.com
SURFACE
Workshop that investigates the permeability of the contact line between inside and outside. It searches for a body as a singular and plural organism that defines itself in and with the world, bringing its traces on its surface.
It is a space of investigation open to dancers and non-dancers and offers a synthesis of contemporary dance methods, embodiment practices, authentic movement and composition in real time, which open up the imagination of the individual and collective body.
MILAN: 12/05/24 S83 phisical theatre h11.00-18.00
Info&Res :maddalenaugolini@gmail.com
INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS
ONLINE or in-person
An intimate space for body and soul listening. For people dancing their dances, speaking their words, blooming their images. Art dance movement therapy sessions for dancers and non dancers.
by appointment, studio sessions in Florence or online, with Maddalena Ugolini.Info&Res :maddalenaugolini@gmail.com
INDIVIDUAL RETREATS
yurta dance studio
Deep and intimate space for body and world listening. 2/3 immersive days of Dança Imaginal in our luminous yurt surrounded by olive trees. For one or two. Borgo di Vetralla, Tuscia. Info&Res :maddalenaugolini@gmail.com
