“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”, “Alba” and “Take me somewhere nice” were presented last year at Galeria Vera Cortês, Lisbon. In December 2024 , InShadow Festival presented “Salt”, her new performance/living installation. Since 2017 organizes the cycle of itinerant recidencies “Lugares” to investigate the relation between body and landscape, anatomy and geography. Founder of Centro Coreografico Rurale in Tuscia, Italy.
Creations
METAXÚ Photography exhibition
InShadow Festival 2025
Concept and Photos Maddalena Ugolini, performer Giuliana Martinez
μεταξύ in ancient Greek means “between.” In Plato’s Symposium, Eros is described as neither mortal nor immortal, but something in between, an intermediary between the human and the divine, the visible and the invisible, reason and madness. This out-of-placeness is precisely a figure of metaxù, a body “displaced” by its own imagination. “No one can ask God to enter, no one can ask God to leave.”
SALT Performance / Living Installation
Bidstone Ex Astronomical Observatory Liverpool 2024
According to the elementary laws of the world, reality is not continuous, but granular, it is made up of quantums and each quantum has no place or time. It is indeterminate, impermanent and without property. From here the performance with the grains of salt comes to us as if to teach us not to retain the names of things, to be light with the events of life because their direction is only a light and necessary illusion.
InShadow Festival 2023
Galeria de arquitetura Lisbon
Artistic Direction: Maddalena Ugolini
Performers: Grupo Imaginal
There is nothing purely human in our body, we carry parents, grandparents, fish, bacteria, hydrogen and carbon atoms. We forgot where we came from in order to say I. Our name is a telluric force that allows the earth to keep living, blending, breathing. We are all pieces of the same stone.
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 the perception of the sensitive and therefore “fantastic” body.
We have been traveling and dancing together since 2017, my heart 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, shivering at the foot of Etna, jumping into white holes under the dome of the ex astronomical observatory of Liverpool, flying with Plato above the iperuranic landscape of Greece, this Spring, for the first time, we will leave the borders of our continent landing on the desert of Morocco!! You are all invited!
Lugares is a place of mutual care where not only dance but also writing, painting and sculpture are tools of personal research. Days of nature and creation, where we will be exploring the authentic movement of the individual and collective body, though somatic practices, improvisation and creative composition.
From the research of the past editions of Lugares , performances such as Alba, Salt and my latest work Metaxù were born and presented in various festivals and galleries. Let’s see the desert what will bring us ✨🐪🌙
“Ogni città riceve la sua forma dal deserto a cui si oppone” Le città invisibili, Italo Calvino
LAVICA Lugares Photo Exhibition by Maddalena Ugolini 2023, Sicilia
ALBALugares Short Doc by Maddalena Ugolini and Peppe Coniglio 2021, Vetralla
ILIÁ Lugares Short Doc by Maddalena Ugolini and Peppe Coniglio 2020, Tre croci
INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS
ONLINE
in-person IN FLORENCE
DANCE MOVEMENT INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS ONLINE / FLORENCE
An intimate space for body listening, somatic research and artistic development. For people dancing their dances, speaking their words, blooming their body. Help to release the body and imagination allowing images and emotions to be danced. Improve the confidence and the presence. Re-enstablish a relation with art, beauty and poetry.
With Maddalena Ugolini dancer, choreographer, art dancemovement therapist with ten years of experience. Founder of @centro_coreografico_rurale and Lugares Dance Residencies. Her research is mostly dedicated to somatic practices, fascialwork, improvisation and creative composition using different materials to open the imagination of the individual and the collective body.
info : maddalenaugolini@gmail.com
www.dancaimaginal.com
DANZA ESPRESSIVA PER BAMBINE/I
scuola di musica di settignano
An imaginary journey to discover the body and movement. A playful exploration of expressive potential through images, colors, natural elements, emotions, and touch.
The second Saturday of the month from 3:00 PM to 4:15 PM at the Settignano Music School. Ages 4 and up.
With Maddalena Ugolini, dancer, choreographer, and dance movement therapist with over ten years of experience.
📝 Appointments:
Saturday, January 10
Saturday, February 21
Saturday, March 14
Saturday, April 18
Saturday, May 8
